


Inconsequential

by aMUSEment345



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 10:36:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17405345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aMUSEment345/pseuds/aMUSEment345
Summary: Reid has become quiet and withdrawn, JJ anxious for action. Morgan doesn't understand what is going on with either of his teammates, and he's worried. Team fic.





	1. Chapter 1

_**A.N. Written during  Reid-lite season 9.  For the purposes of this story, (the awful)**_ ' _ **200' never happened, nor did any of the events referenced in it.  References my story 'The Imposter'.  Science fiction in the background, but the team in the foreground.**_

* * *

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 1** _

"Have you noticed…." Morgan stood looking at the back of Spencer Reid as the younger agent walked away from him.

"Yes. I mean, I've noticed, but I thought it was just me. But if you've noticed it  _too_ , then…" Alex Blake was equally perplexed.

"What do you think it is? Maeve? Is it that he's still in mourning?"

Morgan was aware of the distance that had crept into his relationship with Reid over the past several years, well-demonstrated by the fact that his erstwhile kid brother had chosen to share his grief with others on the team, but not with him.

Blake continued to stare in the direction Reid had walked off, pondering. "I don't know. Could be. But something tells me there's more to it."

As if there needed to be 'more to' grief.

Blake was familiar with loss. And she saw the signs plainly in Reid's face from time to time. But there was another kind of distance to the young profiler now, and she was having trouble placing it. Despite the fact that he was the only member of the BAU she'd known before joining the Unit, she felt she still didn't know him as well as those who'd been his colleagues, and friends, for years.

Morgan was clearly bothered, and had been for some time. He decided it was time to delve further.

"I'm gonna find JJ and see what she thinks."

Their former unit liaison was generally acknowledged to have the closest relationship with Reid. If anyone would know, she should.

* * *

Hours later, Rossi and JJ returned from a presentation at Georgetown, JJ's alma mater. Morgan eyed her entering the bullpen, and emerged from his office to motion her up to speak to him. He didn't want to carry on this particular conversation in her cubicle, which was immediately next to where Reid had his head buried in a file.

"Hey," she called to him as she topped the stairs, "what's up?"

She followed him into his office and took a seat. "Do we have a case?"

"Garcia's downloading some things now, so, yes, we do. Or we will, in a few minutes. But that's not why I called you up here."

"What, then?"

Morgan thought about how to put it. "Reid."

"Spence? What, did something happen? Is something wrong?" With Reid, one never knew. If something could go wrong, it likely would.

Morgan shook his head, acknowledging his uncertainty.

"I don't know. It just seems like...like he's different. Quieter. Sometimes it seems like he's not even there. Hell, half the time you've been spouting the kinds of facts that I usually expect to hear from him."

JJ smiled, trying to deflect his concern. "Maybe we forgot to tell you. Spence and I had a brain exchange."

Morgan didn't think it was funny. "C'mon, JJ. You have to have noticed it. He's not himself. It's almost like…"

Now her eyes widened. "Like New Mexico? When he…" When he'd been caught in the middle of an unscrupulous scientific experiment. One that sent him quantum leaping, without his consent or recollection.

"Yes. Almost like that. But not quite. It's not like he totally disappears. It's more that he doesn't act like Reid anymore. Don't tell me you haven't noticed."

JJ was defensive." I don't have time like I used to, Derek. I'm in the field, with you, not stuck at some white board with Spence. I don't see him enough to notice changes in his behavior."

That got a reaction from Morgan. It was true that most of JJ's field time was spent with him, and he'd seen that she was determined to prove herself in her new role with the team.  _But I noticed. And she didn't?_

He studied his female colleague. "Is something up with you?"

Defensive again. "How did this turn on me? I thought you were worried about Spence, now you're asking  _me_  what's up?"

Morgan began to wonder if he needed to be worried about  _both_  of his younger colleagues. He put up both hands in surrender.

"Whoa, sorry I asked. Never mind about Reid. I'll keep an eye on him."

* * *

Keeping an eye on Reid proved to be difficult for Morgan. The 'Springfield Strangler' seemed to have left bodies all over the county, and Reid and Rossi were visiting each of the sites to view things from a profiler's perspective.

Morgan gave a moment's thought to asking Rossi to probe the younger man, and even considered mentioning something to Hotch. But he knew the unit chief harbored a continued concern about Reid's recovery from the loss of Maeve, and Morgan didn't want to draw undue attention to something he wasn't sure was real. But he definitely had his suspicions.

He tried drawing out his companion as they made their way to the university where one of their victims served as an administrative assistant.

"So, you really don't miss the work you used to do? You and Reid made a pretty good team reviewing files. I thought you were even catching on to his geographic profiling back in the day."

JJ shook her head. "No, I don't miss it. Not that part, at least. I did like working with the families. Well, I guess 'like' is the wrong word, because it was pretty challenging, dealing with all that emotion. But…well, I guess I felt like I was helping them, in a way. More directly, more one-on-one."

Morgan chanced a look over at her. "More than now, you mean? We spend less time with the families, and more with the unsub."

"Right. And….no, I don't like being around unsubs any more than anyone else does. But it is kind of….satisfying, I guess…..to feel like I've actually helped put an end to something, rather than just comforting someone."

Morgan got that. "You like the action."

He'd begun to understand that about his oft-time partner.

She grinned. "Yep. I've always been physical. You just couldn't tell that when I was stuck in some office somewhere. But this is more up my alley."

Morgan thought a moment about what he wanted to say.

"You do realize that what they actually pay us for is the profiling, right? That the 'action'..," he took his fingers off the steering wheel long enough to make finger quotes…"is just a side effect? And the profiling happens inside our heads, whether we're in the office or in the field."

JJ rolled her eyes. "I know, Derek. But it just feels better, like I'm contributing to all aspects of the case."

Morgan was intrigued. He hadn't understood this about JJ. And what she was saying made him wonder if Reid….and, for that matter, his Baby Girl….felt the same way about their roles.

"Are you saying you felt…..lesser…..as the liaison? Because, after all, you're the one who picked out our cases for us. Hell, you talked us into a few of them. And you were right. All the work in the field wouldn't have mattered then, because we wouldn't have been there at all."

That seemed to deflate her a bit. She was silent for such a long time that Morgan wondered if she'd been hurt by his comment in some way.

"Blondie?"

"I'm thinking. I guess I knew that, at the time. But, somehow, it faded into the background. All I know is that, when I went to State, I was mostly cooped up in an office, or attending an endless series of meetings, when I wasn't announcing unpopular things and being grilled in press conferences. I couldn't wait to get out of there. So, I took the courses, and jumped at the chance to come back, when Rossi offered it. But the only thing open was the profiler position, and I was glad to get it."

Morgan remembered an overheard conversation between JJ and Emily Prentiss, before his Princess had left them for good.

"If you don't mind my asking….how did Will feel about that?"

She flashed him a look, then turned her gaze back out the window.

"I don't mind. And he wasn't thrilled. My hours weren't a whole lot better, day to day, when I was at State, but I did very little traveling. So he was happier that I was around more. And not so happy to have me out of town again. But, obviously, he got over it." She waved her wedding ring at her partner.

Morgan grinned. "So he did. Back to what I was asking before…..did you really feel like you weren't contributing? Do you think Pretty Boy feels that way? And Garcia?"

His companion shrugged. "Spence gets into the field some of the time. I've never had the sense that he's as confident there as he is in front of a white board, though. And Pen…..she's where she wants to be. She only tolerates coming along on cases when Hotch demands it. She's told me she's much more comfortable in her lair."

Morgan chuckled. "And quite a lair it is." He sighed his confusion about Reid. "I was just looking to understand what might be going on with the Kid. Maybe he's restless. Maybe he wants something more, or just different."

The thought silenced them both. Neither could fathom trying to do the work they did without the intellect and wisdom of Spencer Reid, even if neither was inclined to do that work beside him.

And neither wanted to think about the emotional void an absent Reid might impose on their lives.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 2** _

"So, he's choosing locations within two miles of the interstate or a major state road. And he's not gone far off road…" Reid squinted into the distance, his hand shading his eyes from the sun.

"So he's probably not using any kind of utility vehicle, or truck. He's limited by what his machine can handle," finished Rossi.

Reid continued, "But there are no tire tracks immediately around the sites, so he either carried them, or they walked themselves in." It would make the difference between the locations being dump sites or kill sites.

"We're gonna have to hope CSI can help with that. There are too many leaves and twigs here for us to tell if there were two sets of footprints. Hell, we can't even tell if there's one set."

"Deduction, Rossi. There had to be at least one. So, if CSI can find some sort of patterning in the leaves, they should be able to tell us if there were differences among them."

"If…"

"If. I know, it's not much to go on. Still….."

Neither had anything else at the sites been of much help. Rossi didn't like being frustrated. "Let's get back to the precinct."

* * *

When the two men returned, Hotch and Blake had just finished interviewing two of the victims' families, and were comparing notes.

The unit chief raised his eyes to them. "Anything?"

Rossi looked his disappointment. "Nada. Not even a set of footprints."

Reid had gone immediately over to the area map, and plotted the four sites. Now he stood back and looked at it, tapping his chin with one hand.

"Reid?" Hotch had seen a look of enlightenment cross the young profiler's face.

"I'm….not…..sure. Let me look into something, and then I'll let you know."

It had paid off too many times in the past. Hotch simply nodded at his resident genius and watched as he stalked off in the direction of the fax machine.

A short time later, they were joined by two more of their teammates.

"Hey, guys. Any luck?" JJ asked, as she preceded Morgan into the room.

The others filled their colleagues in.

"Both families say there was nothing to indicate their daughters were into anything dangerous, or involved in a difficult relationship, or even a new relationship. And they would probably have known. It didn't seem like any of them were estranged." Blake summarized the findings of both her interview and Hotch's.

"Nothing at the sites," added Rossi, "although Reid seems like he found something to chew on."

"Where  _is_  Spence?" JJ peeked out the door and scanned the squad room, but didn't spy her friend. Now that Morgan had raised the issue of Reid's absences, she was almost tempted to start looking in closets, and under tables.

"Don't know. He just kind of got that look on his face, and ran out of here." Rossi had acclimated to Reid's ways, but still wasn't always quite sure what to make of them.

JJ looked at Morgan. Their prior conversation had made her sensitive to the way she'd been interacting…or not…with Reid. "Should I look for him?"

Hotch wasn't aware of the concerns of half his team, and simply dismissed the idea. "He'll be back. Let's review what we do have. We're going to have to give the police  _some_  kind of profile."

* * *

JJ didn't see Reid again until just after the group had broken for dinner and a few hours' rest. She'd been reluctant to leave without knowing where he was, and offered to stay and finish reviewing some files. She was unhappily reading through the health, academic and work records of their four victims when her male colleague came flying back into the room, holding several pages of paper.

"Spence, where have you been?"

"Huh? Oh, I was at the fax machine."

"This whole time?"

He looked like he didn't understand.

"This whole time. Morgan and I have been back for hours, and you weren't here."

His expression told her he was surprised to have been missed.

"What, you didn't think we would notice?" JJ began to give more credence to Morgan's concerns. This wasn't the Reid she was accustomed to.

He didn't answer her last query. Instead, he reported, "I needed these." Waving the papers in his hand. "And now I need a satellite map. Or a bird's eye view," he corrected, having been tutored by Garcia.

JJ moved over to a desk top computer. "I'm game. What do you need a map of?"

"The county. Actually, just a twenty mile radius around Springfield, I guess." It was where all the bodies had been found.

JJ had sat with Garcia often enough to have acquired a reasonable set of computer skills. Now she employed them, clicking away with the mouse.

"Okay, here we are. Here's the county. Do you need me to plot the sites?"

Reid looked at her and smiled. It was almost like old times. Almost.

"Yes. Here are the coordinates." He gave the numbers, and JJ mapped each of the four sites.

"Okay, what now?"

"Now we need to zoom in to the locations. Close as you can get."

JJ did her best, but the mouse, and the screen, were finicky. "I can't get any better than this."

He wasn't satisfied. "We need to get in closer. I'll call Garcia."

But JJ was enjoying the teamwork task, and reluctant to get anyone else involved. Even her good friend.

"We can do it, Spence. I think we just need a tablet. You know, so we can enlarge it by hand."

He didn't, but she sounded convincing, so Reid agreed. "All right. Where do we get one?"

JJ rolled her eyes at him. She was willing to bet there were at least twelve tablets in the next room.

"Never mind, I'll get one. Be right back." As she hurried from the room, she realized,  _I don't even know what he's trying to do, and here I am rushing out to borrow somebody's tablet. I have that much confidence in him.  
_

It wasn't only that, she realized. She was excited. Activated. In a way that chasing someone down an alleyway, or snaking her way through a scene with a possible unsub, had never accomplished.

_Those get my adrenalin up. But that's fight-or-flight. This is excitement. Anticipation. Like we're about to have a breakthrough_.

Not naturally reflective, JJ might have missed the irony. But her prior conversation had primed her to notice that the most excitement in her day today was being brought to her by an as-yet-unstated idea of their resident genius.  _That's how much I trust him. That's how much I know he'll produce._

Surprising even herself, her subconscious added _, that's how much I respect him._

Tablet in hand, JJ returned to the conference room and called up the map site again, re-entering the loci. Then she enlarged the map, over and over again, using her fingers. Finally, they were at the maximum.

"Is that it?" inquired Reid.

"That's it. What now?"

Reid splayed out the papers from his hand on the table before them. "Now we look for landmarks."

JJ raised her brows to him. Every one of the photos showed a treed plot with a body in the center.

"What landmarks?"

He wasn't swayed from his task. "We need to match these trees in each shot to the ones we see on the map."

_We do?_  "Why?"

"I just need to see something. I'll tell you, if I'm right."

From past experience, JJ knew his promise to tell her only if he was right didn't stem from ego. He just didn't want to cloud her mind, or waste her time, with a false theory.

She fell back on her innate sense of trust in her colleague.

"All right. But I think it will have to be your job, Spence. I don't think I can help you. It all looks the same to me."

He raised one of the site photos and rotated it slowly, until he was satisfied with its orientation compared with the map. He then laid it carefully on the table, preserving the orientation, and took up the next paper, as he asked her to pull up the next location on the on-line map. He did the same matching exercise with the second paper, and then the third. By then, JJ was caught up in the process, and knew to bring up each site successively.

When the fourth location came up on the PC screen, she frowned. "It looks like this one is older. The trees are bare."

"It's okay, I think I can still figure it out." It took him a moment longer to imagine the setting with fully-leaved trees, but he managed.

As he laid the final paper on the table, he motioned JJ over.

"What do you see?"

She looked at the photos, amazed. Not so much by what she saw, as by the fact that he'd somehow known. She was only looking at it because he'd somehow realized it was there.

"They're all facing the same way. All of them."

He nodded, proud of her. "They're facing east."

JJ stood erect, puzzling it out. "East? As in facing Mecca?"

Reid's index finger went into the air, a tell-tale sign of a professorial moment coming on.

"Facing east is common to many forms of spirituality. Even many modern Christian churches are built with the altar facing east. Part of it may be because of the affiliation of the origin of many religious groups with locations in the Middle East. But it's also common to many non-traditional religions, probably because of the worship of the place where the sun rises."

"So it doesn't really tell us anything about the unsub's religious affiliation."

"No. But it does tell us  _something_."

She thought about it. "It tells us that our unsub has a religious motive."

Reid nodded. "Which could either mean that he sees the victims as a sacrifice, or he's punishing them for their sins, or …"

"Or he's trying to redeem them." JJ was excited. They may not have identified their target, but they'd moved far ahead in the development of their profile.

"Exactly. Now we need to tell Hotch."

* * *

It proved to be exactly the breakthrough they'd needed. Three university students recalled a male who'd approached their group on the school's quadrangle, spouting religious messages of vengeance.

"He kept telling us to beg forgiveness, but he wouldn't say for what. He was giving us the creeps, so we got up and left. He tried to follow us, but a couple of our friends from the hockey team came along, and he just kind of slinked away."

None had noticed him near the building that housed the office of the murdered administrative assistant, but it was a substantial lead, nonetheless. A campus-wide appeal for information yielded a few more student encounters with the same man. Together, the witnesses were able to reach consensus on a sketch of the suspect. Within eighteen hours of the sketch being released to the media, Morgan, Rossi and JJ were on their way to the last known location of their suspect.

This time, JJ was reflective. Her conversation with Morgan the other day, and her breakthrough with Reid, had caused her to seriously examine whether she'd gotten a bit lost on the way to becoming a profiler.

"Spence should be with us. He really was the one who figured it out."  _He should take it from the office, and into the field. But he doesn't seem to care as much about that. So why do I?_

Now that JJ had mentioned Reid, Morgan decided to bring Rossi in on his concern for their colleague. "Hey, Rossi, have you noticed anything strange about the Kid recently?" He caught the senior profiler's eyes in the rear-view mirror.

Rossi had  _always_  found things strange with Reid, but he'd gotten used to it. In fact, he'd developed a soft spot in his heart for the young man who'd grieved so deeply last year. And it had gotten even softer when he'd had to grieve his own loss of Erin Strauss.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, he's different. Quiet. I haven't heard him go on about something in months. And he pretty much keeps to himself. I can't remember the last time he agreed to come out with us for a drink or a meal."

Rossi turned and watched out the window. "He suffered a great loss, Derek. These things don't just take time. They change a person."  _I should know._

JJ shifted in her seat so she could turn and look at Rossi. "What do you mean? You think he's changed in some way?"

Rossi sat back now, and folded his hands across his abdomen. It was his usual 'dispensing of wisdom' pose.

"You know, in our business, we see death on a daily basis. We see it more than we see life, sometimes. And yet….and maybe even because of it….we don't quite process it. We keep our distance. It's protective."

The two in the front seat nodded slowly, agreeing. Rossi went on.

"Death is an event that happens to someone else, and we know that one day it will happen to us. But it's impossible to process about the death of an individual if you didn't know them in life. You can't really know the loss, you can't experience the terrible mystery of how a vitality can have been extinguished. Not until it happens to someone you know."

Both of the younger profilers had made that kind of acquaintance with death at very young ages. Rossi's words resonated with them. JJ responded first.

"You can't really understand it until it happens to a life that's important to yours." A statement, not a question. It sounded like a memory.

"Even then, my young friend. I don't know that we ever really understand it."

"I get that. But you think Spence is still trying to make sense of it? Of losing Maeve?"

"He may well be. But, since you've both noticed a great change in him, I suspect he's also trying to make sense of something else."

"What's that, Rossi?" Morgan inquired.

"He's probably trying to make sense of his own life. Death will do that to a person."


	3. Chapter 3

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 3** _

If taking down a serial killer fueled on religiosity could ever be said to be routine, this take-down would have fallen into that category. Except that they had reason to believe the unsub had abducted a fifth victim, and he wasn't talking.

Morgan had broken down the apartment door, and then been surprised to see his prey sitting calmly at a small kitchen table, almost as though he'd been awaiting the intrusion.

"FBI! You're under arrest!"

Their unsub simply sat, impassive.

"Stand up and put your hands behind your back!"

The unsub did as commanded, a quizzical look on his face. His eyes followed JJ and Rossi as they checked the rest of the apartment.

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

Morgan turned back to his prisoner. "Where is she?"

"Where is who?"

"You know what I'm talking about….where is Marjorie Stewart?"

A self-satisfied smile. "Oh, Marjorie…..is that her name?"

With the virtual confirmation of the abduction, Rossi decided his hostage-negotiation skills were called for.

"It's not too late. You can still help yourself by helping her. Tell us where she is, and we'll ask them to go easy on you." Knowing that the unsub's mental illness would probably obviate a trial anyway.

But the man simply continued to smile.

Rossi threw a look at JJ. Since the unsub's victims were women, perhaps an interaction with his opposite sex would move the man.

JJ put down her gun, and slowly approached the prisoner, careful to keep her voice soft, even, encouraging. As she would realize later, she began to channel an inner Reid, hoping to truly connect with the man.

"You can still save her, Cal. I know you think you need to kill her to save her," almost choking on the words. "But you don't. You don't need to kill her, Cal. You can just tell us where she is, and we can help her live a better life."

They'd profiled that he was trying to redeem his victims, but had never reached a conclusion as to what sin or sins the unsub thought the victims had committed, so JJ had to walk a fine line here.

_Help me, Spence! What do I say next?_

But then, she realized she didn't entirely need Reid. She'd been dealing with the public since her recruitment into the BAU. She'd been releasing and, in some cases, manipulating, information for years. JJ took a deep breath and reached back to her liaison period.

"Cal, I know you want to save her. You only want what's best for her. I get that. And I can make the others see it, too. But….I think there might be another way. I think we may be able to save her together. We can show her where she's gone wrong, and help her to change her life. We can do it together, Cal. I just need to know where she is…."

He was listening to her with rapt attention, but seemed perturbed by something she'd said.

"She can't change! She's too far gone! She needs to pay for her sins, or she'll be condemned!"

The three profilers exchanged glances, each reaching the same conclusion. He thinks he's saving them from eternal damnation.

JJ waited for him to calm down, then started in again in her softest voice.

"If we work together, we can find a way for her to pay for her sins. Can't we? And then, maybe, she can help the other women do the same thing. It would be so much easier for you that way, wouldn't it, Cal? You must be so tired, from trying to help all of them. It would be so much easier if they could help one another…."

At the mention of his fatigue, the unsub's shoulders slumped, and JJ knew she'd connected with him in some way. She stopped talking, and waited him out. Finally….

"You can save her?"

JJ held his gaze, and nodded slowly.  _Even if 'save' means one thing to you, and another to me._

"All right. All right, I'll show you. She's in the boat house."

A quick call to Garcia yielded the information they needed. There was a small lake within Reid's area of triangulation. They would send a team there.

Morgan made as if to pull the unsub up by his restrained hands, but JJ motioned him to stop. Having made the connection, she found a certain level of sympathy rising within her. He may have committed heinous crimes, but their unsub had been full of good intentions.

"Thank you, Cal. You did the right thing."

* * *

"I heard what you did out there. Congratulations." Reid greeted JJ as she returned to the precinct with her colleagues, a subdued unsub and rescued potential victim in tow.

She tried to shrug it off, but her blush gave her away. She  _was_ proud of herself. And she was being complimented by the person who'd shown her how to do it, even if he didn't realize it.

"Thanks, Spence. But if I did anything, it was because I've seen you do the same, any number of times."

He snorted. "Hmph! I don't exactly have a great track record with that stuff, JJ. I'm as likely to lose them as not."

It was true that there had been unsubs who'd not responded to his attempts at connection. Or, even having responded, proceeded to take their own lives, and sometimes the lives of others. He'd beaten himself up about it more times than he could count. And yet, each time he found himself in the situation again, he couldn't help help but give it another attempt.  _Some learning curve._

"Hey, Pretty Boy, don't say that. You can't control what they do. You can only try."  _And you try a whole hell of a lot more than the rest of us do. Or, at least, you used to._

But, like the others on the team, Morgan had noticed Reid backing away from such situations, letting someone else take the lead. He couldn't tease out whether it was a lack of confidence, or just part of his general flatness of affect. It was part of what concerned him about his young friend.

_You're not the same. Why?_

* * *

On the ride home, JJ closed her eyes and feigned sleep, feeling as though she had much to process, and knowing no other way to be granted privacy on the plane. Sitting across from her, Aaron Hotchner gave her a full hour before calling her out. Then, without preamble, he simply asked a question.

"Have you had enough time?"

It took a repeat of his query before JJ realized she was being addressed. Then her brain made the leap quickly, and she realized she'd been found out by her unit chief, the experienced profiler. Not even attempting to prolong the ruse, she opened her eyes to his intense gaze.

"I….just have a lot to think about."

He gave her a slow nod, acknowledging the truth of her statement. "You did very well today."

She smiled. "Thanks. I just found a way to…."

"Empathize," he provided. The word brought a memory back to both of them.

She gave a wry chuckle. "I empathized. Like you told me to do, that time when I was the only one available to go on the radio…"

"Exactly. It worked then, and now, because you found a way to connect with the unsub."

It was the gift and the curse of the profiler. Being able to connect, when it was absolutely necessary, also meant being able to find something within themselves that identified with the unsub.

JJ turned her eyes away, toward the window. "I used to think that talking was all I did. That it didn't make any kind of difference. It was just words. I used to think that it was the rest of you, in the field, who really saved people."

Hotch nodded. "And now you think differently." It was a statement.

She shrugged. "Now I don't know what to think. I mean, I  _was_  in the field. I couldn't have done that from an office."

"But you were able to do it without violence. You didn't need a weapon…."

Now she laughed. "Spence would say that I  _had_  a weapon…my brain."

Hotch acknowledged it with a smile. "And would he be right?"

"He usually is."

"True enough. So, why are you troubled? You were in the field, as you wanted. And you made a difference."

"That's just it, Hotch. Making a difference. I used to think that the work I did with families and victims made a difference. And then, at some point, it didn't seem like enough. And now, I don't know that being in the field does that for me, either. Not the way I thought it would, at least."

Hotch's brow lowered as his eyes narrowed. "Are you sure that's what's bothering you?"

Not for the first time, JJ noted how even a question from Hotch could seem like a revelation. She pondered for a while before she answered.

"No."  _Not at all._

* * *

Weeks passed, and cases came and went. Without either of them discussing it, Rossi's words in the SUV kept resonating in the minds of both Morgan and JJ.

" _You know, in our business, we see death on a daily basis. We see it more than we see life, sometimes. And yet….and maybe even because of it….we don't quite process it. We keep our distance. It's protective."_

Rossi had said that maybe Death had made a change in Reid. More and more, JJ spent time wondering if it had done the same in her.

_I see it up close now. Maybe too up close. I didn't really have to protect myself from it before, I was too focused on the families, the living people in front of me. But now I see it all the time. Sometimes I even take part in it._

She would get just that far in her ruminating, and could feel her heart rate start to accelerate, her breathing become just a little bit more shallow. And she would mentally change the subject.

_Not now. I'm too busy. I'll think about it later._

* * *

Morgan was less inclined to be introspective at the moment. He was too worried about Reid, and whether Rossi's statement might be true about his young friend.

Rossi didn't just mean that Death had changed Reid. He meant that  _Maeve's_  death changed him. And the experienced profiler was worried about exactly what that might mean.

_Detachment. That's what it is. He's detached from us. Not so much from work, but from us._

Having already shared his concern with the others, he now brought it to Hotch.

"He's there, but he's not there, you know? He still does his work, but….I don't know. It's like the light's gone out. He used to get so excited whenever he'd find something to ramble on, and he'd drive us crazy. He wouldn't shut up until we made him. Now he seems like he barely has the energy to get it out."  _I think I'd welcome him driving me crazy right about now._

If Aaron Hotchner shared Morgan's concern, he wasn't about to let it show. He simply took in what his team member had to say, and remarked, "Thanks for letting me know. I'll keep an eye on him."

Morgan was frustrated. "That's all you've got? You'll keep an eye on him?"

"Morgan, if you're worried, take him aside and talk to him. I won't stop you."

The younger man was already headed for the door.

"I'll do just that."

With his back to his unit chief, Morgan couldn't see the look of approval that crossed Hotch's face. Some things were best accomplished by friends.

* * *

As had been happening all too often lately, the young genius had absented himself from the bullpen. Morgan hunted him down and found him in the round table room, a pile of files before him on the table.

"Hey, Pretty Boy. What's up? What are you doing up here?"

Reid shrugged. "Just spreading out. Why, did you need me for something?"

Morgan perched on the table next to his friend.  _Might as well get right to it._

"I don't need anything. Except to know what's wrong with you."

Reid's eyes immediately broke away. "Wrong? Nothing's wrong."

Morgan gave him a slow nod.  _So that's how we're going to play it._

"C'mon, Kid. Who do you think you're talking to here?"

Receiving an eye roll in return. The familiar gesture felt like permission to proceed.

"Reid, something is most definitely wrong."

Morgan gave his colleague a moment to answer, but then continued when the only response was silence,

"What is it, Kid? Don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about. You're different. You've been different, for a long time now."

Reid stared at the table, unwilling, or unable, to make eye contact with his friend.

"Kid?"

Another long pause. Then, "I don't know."

At least he hadn't denied it. At least they were, at last, talking about it. Whatever 'it' was.

Morgan pulled out a chair and sat down next to Reid. "Tell me."

The younger man just shook his head. "That's just it. There's nothing to tell. I just…"

"You just…what?"

Reid was still shaking his head. "I just…..it doesn't matter.  _I_  don't matter. I guess that's it. I realized I'm thirty-three years old, and I don't matter."

"What does that mean, you don't matter?" Morgan twisted forward in his seat, trying to get into Reid's sight line. But it was difficult, with the young genius focused on the table.

"I mean….. I mean, what do I do? I gather information…I listen, I read, I talk to witnesses, I look at dead bodies….and I process it. I gather information and I process it. And sometimes I have an original thought. But, let's face it, anyone could do what I do. More and more, Garcia's computers can get to a conclusion faster than I can. You guys have all heard me enough, you can anticipate what I'll say. Sometimes you even get there before me."

_Only when grief is slowing you down, Kid. Only then._  But Morgan didn't say it aloud. Now that Reid had started in, it all seemed to be pouring out, and Morgan wanted to do nothing to interfere.

"I just don't make a difference. I remember, when I was a kid, my mom used to tell me, "with great talent comes great responsibility". And I believed her. I thought I would do something really great. I  _wanted_ to do something really great. I wanted to cure my mom, and others like her. I remember I even told Emily about it one time. I told her that I thought I'd have found a cure for schizophrenia by the time I was thirty. And look at me," he put his hands out, palms up, in disgust. "Nothing. I've done nothing. For whatever amount of time I have, I'll have walked the earth and not left a single footprint on it. Not a cure, not a discovery. Not even a family…" His voice trailed off at the last.

The older man felt completely out of his element, and wished for one of the others to come and disturb them.  _Any one of them._   _Anybody but me would be better at this._  But, he realized, it would fall to him. And, just maybe, his affection for his colleague would be enough to grant him the wisdom he needed.

Morgan shifted his chair before beginning, trying to find a pose that would imply assurance.

"Kid, I can't believe I just heard you say that. Have you not been paying attention, these past…what is it, nine years?"

Reid threw him a distrusting look. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, there have been dozens of people you've helped, directly. Even some of our unsubs."

Morgan smiled when he saw Reid react to that. Of the team, Reid was always the most vocal about the need to understand the life traumas that created an unsub.

The senior profiler continued. "And, by extension, you've helped hundreds…..maybe even thousands….more. Every person we caught because of some insight you had….we saved all of their future victims, and all of the pain those families would have gone through. It's the same for all of us, Pretty Boy. None of us can see the extent of the difference we make. We just have to know it's there."

Reid nodded softly, his head still bowed to the table. He'd had exactly that full conversation with himself, many times. But it wasn't enough. And he didn't think Derek Morgan could understand. So he didn't argue the point.

"You're right. I know, you're right."

Morgan was disconcerted. That had been way too easy. And Reid didn't look any different now from how he had before. "That's not it, is it?"

Reid closed his eyes, knowing there was no way to have the rest of the conversation without sounding pathetic.  _Which is exactly what it is. Pathetic. Even to me. The pathetic FBI genius._

Morgan leaned forward again, and actually laid his hand on Reid's. He sensed that he was in the midst of a critical conversation, and he couldn't let it end without fully understanding.

"Kid, I can tell there's more to it. Look, I know I haven't been the best of friends to you this past year or so. I'm sorry for that. It's just…..I guess I don't do relationships well, you know? Or else I'd be in one, right?"

Morgan was gratified to see Reid smile. "So when I guessed that you'd found someone, all I knew how to do was tease you about it. But to tell you the truth, I think I was a little bit jealous."

Both men sobered completely at the thought of Maeve. Her loss had been devastating to Reid, in a way that Morgan, if he was honest with himself, actually envied. He'd never been that in love, that he could be so ravished by the loss.

But, after Maeve's death, and Reid's continued grieving, Morgan simply hadn't known what to do. He had only a professional frame of reference, and not a personal one. So he'd simply thrown himself back into his work, and watched Reid do the same. Once, they might have accomplished that process together, but JJ's new status as a profiler, and her frequent partnering with Morgan, had interrupted that relationship. The two had grown apart when the younger man had most needed the support.

Gradually, it dawned on Morgan. That was it. Both Morgan and JJ had been Reid's support system, and they were both physically absent to him now. And Emily, who was now an ocean away. Blake was too new, Rossi and Hotch too high up the ladder. Reid had been abandoned when he'd most needed them.

But that's not what he'd talked about, when pressed. He'd said he didn't make a difference. He'd thought he was inconsequential.

The light went on.  _He thinks he's inconsequential to us, too. Not just the victims, not just the families. To us. He thinks we've moved on without him. He thinks he doesn't matter, to anyone._ And, suddenly, he had another insight. _He thinks he didn't matter enough to her either. He thinks he should have been able to keep her here._

In that moment, Morgan felt as helpless as he ever had in his adult life.  _I can break down doors, I can take down killers. But I don't know how to make one of my best friends see the truth._

They'd left the conversation at Maeve. Now Morgan rejoined it.

"Kid…..Reid….I'm sorry. I'm sorry she's gone. I'm sorry we couldn't stop what happened. But you have to know that you tried your best. And she knew it, too. I could see that. She loved you, Reid. And, maybe more to the point, she knew you loved her."

Remembering their conversation about the words Maeve had said to Reid, the words he hadn't said back to her.

"How? How could she have known?"

"Are you kidding me? Kid, right in front of her….right in front of all of us, you said you were willing to die for her. How is that not letting her know you loved her?" He tried a different tack. "You know, for a genius, you can be awfully concrete. So you didn't say the words. Do  _you_  have to hear words to know what someone feels?"

Reid could only give a wry smile.

"You loved her, Kid. And she knew that. There's no bigger difference a person can make in another person's life, no matter how long they get to do it."

Reid seemed to be having trouble finding his voice. When he spoke, it was so softly that Morgan had to strain to hear him.

"I never stopped."

Morgan sat back, taking it in. ' _I never stopped.'_

"Pretty Boy…..you know you don't have to, don't you? You don't have to stop loving her. But it doesn't mean you can't have a chance again, with someone else."

Morgan would never know where the wisdom was coming from, but he would be ever grateful for its bestowal. He got it, now. Reid thought his chance at love was over. Taken, and then taken away. He felt like he'd accomplished little with his brain, and even less with his heart.

Reid hadn't responded to Morgan's last statement, but Derek Morgan didn't need to hear words to know what someone was feeling, either.  _He may have grown a little scar tissue on the surface, but underneath, he's just a big open wound, praying to heal._


	4. Chapter 4

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 4** _

"I don't know what to do with him, Baby Girl. He's just not right. In a way that I don't think I can completely understand. Remember when I was saying it was like he wasn't with us? Almost like before?"

Garcia had turned so that she could only see her screens as reflections of one another. She wanted to give this conversation her full attention.

"But I thought you said it was different?"

She'd noticed changes in Reid as well, but didn't spend nearly as much time with him as did the rest of the team.

"It is. He's not physically not there. I mean, his molecules are all staying in one place. But his mind is on other things. Mostly Maeve, and….what?!"

Garcia's eyes had flown wide, and she'd reached out and grabbed Morgan with an iron grip.

"Derek…..his molecules! Suppose he wants his molecules to go back in time…..you know, to …."

Morgan was shocked that he hadn't thought of it before. "To before Maeve was killed. But….no…are you serious?"

Even having lived through the experience, Morgan wasn't so sure about the whole tesseract idea. No one had been able to prove to him that Reid had, in fact, been going forward and backward in time. And Reid's lack of recall…or, at least, his confusion about the whole experience…..didn't help that a bit.

If it were possible, Garcia's eyes would have flown even wider as an idea struck her.

"Do you think he's already been doing it? Do you think that's why he's seemed so distant? Do you think he's tessering?"

Morgan just stared at her and then looked away, turning his mind's eye to all of his recent interactions with Reid. He was staggered at the possibility. But he'd also been made aware of the depth of Reid's need. Maybe his friend had decided the well-known risk to his intellect was worth it.

_Is it that bad, Pretty Boy? Do you need her that badly?_

In a paradoxical way, Morgan wished to be familiar with the kind of love and loss his kid brother had experienced, so he could better understand it. At the same time, he realized, that experience might impact his ability to understand anything at all, as it had done to Reid.

_But it is about that, isn't it Kid? I called you one big open wound of hurt. But it's more like_ need _, isn't it?_

But, when Morgan had probed him, the genius had given different excuses for his reserved behavior. Dissatisfaction with his contributions to humankind. Grief, and regret, with the loss of Maeve.

In retrospect, thought Morgan, those answers had been too…..available. As Reid had acknowledged to him, he'd already had the whole 'I thought I would cure schizophrenia by the time I was thirty' conversation with Emily Prentiss. And the loss of Maeve had been too public for anyone of the team not to know about it. Morgan remembered thinking that his persuasion of Reid had been a bit too easy.

_He was just trying to get rid of me, before I pushed the conversation in another direction. Not that I would ever have gotten around to time travel._

Morgan still couldn't quite believe he was having an internal conversation on the subject.

Penelope Garcia had no trouble at all believing in the topic. But she could see the doubt on her friend's face.

"I know you don't believe in it, my Delicious Delight, but I do. I haven't been a Whovian all these years for nothing, you know. Derek, we have to tell someone about this. I get that my sweet boo is hurting, but they were really clear about what they learned from the experiment. It can cost him brain cells and IQ points!"

Morgan started to shake his head. "If it's true, as you say….well, I don't know how we can stop him."

Garcia flew out of her chair and started to usher Morgan out of the room.

"I don't either. But you know as well as I do that he's not thinking clearly right now. He's thinking with his heart, and his heart is broken. If it was his brain that was broken, would you let him use it to make decisions?"

She had a point. But Morgan still wasn't sure what to do about it. All he knew was that his Baby Girl was pushing him toward the door.

"Where are we going?"

"To see Hotch. He'll know what to do."

* * *

Apparently, she was wrong. All Aaron Hotchner seemed to know to do was to fall into his chair and hold his head in his hand.

"Hotch?" Morgan was started to worry about yet a third member of his team, fearful of one day being the only one left standing.

The unit chief just sat, staring at his desk, and shaking his head.

"I should have seen it."

Morgan hadn't allowed the thought full entrance to his brain, but he'd been hoping Hotch would dismiss the idea out of hand, so they could all get back to living in reality. The reality he was comfortable with.

"You should have seen…..Hotch, you don't really think Reid's trying to time travel, do you?"

Without responding to the question, Hotch picked up his desk phone and speed-dialed a number.

"Would you step into my office, please? We should probably have this conversation only once."

Morgan and Garcia looked at each other and shrugged, unable to tell if their unit chief was upset with them, or with the idea they'd brought him.

Seconds later, Dave Rossi gave a soft knock on the jamb of the open door. "I didn't know we were having a party. Do you want me to get the others?"

Hotch shook his head. "It would take too long to explain all this to Alex. And I'll talk to JJ later."

The others heard the unsaid. Something must be going on with JJ as well. Each of them shot glances at the others. And Rossi's glance landed back on the face of his good friend. He realized which name was still out of the loop.

"Do I take it this is about Reid?"

Hotch motioned all of them to take seats as he nodded his assent to Rossi's question.

"Morgan, fill us in, please…..on all of it."

Sensitive to the implied confidentiality of his talk with Reid, Morgan summarized it in general terms, after first explaining the many observations that had led to his concern about his younger colleague.

"And then I mentioned it to Penelope, and she thought…."

And Garcia launched into her theory that Reid might be actively tessering, or at least seeking to do so.

Rossi recalled the past case vividly. It wasn't the kind of thing one would forget. He and Morgan had been the two biggest skeptics among them, until they'd seen the vibrations for themselves.

"I thought we were told it was dangerous. It took him months to recover, the last time. He was even having episodes of it after those wacko scientists stopped doing it to him, right? What was it they called it?"

"Reverberations," offered Garcia. "See, waves that encounter an obstacle create a wave in the opposite direction, in response to it, and then, when that wave hits the origin, it creates another reactive wave and..."

Rossi's raised palm put a stop to her rambling. "Thank you, Penelope Reid."

Morgan looked around at the others, uncertain. "So, are we saying we believe this? We think he's trying to tesser?"

Rossi brought up a practical point. "Is it something he can do on his own? Weren't those scientists using equipment to focus the vibrations….or something like that?"

Hotch didn't answer either question directly. Instead, he turned to Garcia.

"See if he's been in contact with Los Alamos, or any of the individuals involved."

She started to object. It wasn't something they did to one another. "Sir, are you asking me to look at his phone records, and…"

"Whatever you have to do, Garcia. Dave, call Los Alamos and find out if it's possible for Reid to attempt it on his own."

Garcia had already risen, and was about to exit the room, when she turned.

"Sir….what about JJ?"

She didn't have to expound. They all knew of the closeness between the two profilers, even if life circumstance had changed it. And they all recalled their experience in New Mexico, when JJ had begun vibrating right along with Reid. Even if there was something going on with her, she would want to know about this. She would need to know.

"I'll take care of it." Then the unit chief turned back to Morgan. "Find Reid and stick with him. I don't care what you have to do, or what you tell him. Just don't let him out of your sight."

_Sure,_  thought Morgan _, I get all the easy assignments. Not._

* * *

Before moving on to anything else, Hotch called Alex Blake into his office. As their newest team member, she would have been completely unaware of the odd events that had taken place in New Mexico a few years ago, unless another member of the team had told her. But no one ever talked about it.

A small smile kept coming to Alex' s lips as Hotch recounted the tale, and then gave the latest theory about Reid trying to replicate what had happened.

"You're kidding me, right? This is some kind of initiation rite, coming….what, a year? ….too late?"

The unit chief completely understood her reaction. It was the same each of them had had, at the time.

But he shook his head. "It's real, I'm afraid."

Now Blake's eyes shot wide. "It really happened?"

A silent nod from Hotch was all the acknowledgement she received.

"And you think….." Her words cut off, as she did her own thinking. A long moment passed before she responded.

"Well…if I suspend my disbelief….and, as you're telling me, I guess I'll have to….. if I do that, then it makes sense. Who wouldn't want to go back in time to before a tragedy happened? Unless….."

Hotch could tell from the expression on Blake's face that she'd gotten it. "Exactly. Unless it's only possible to visit the past, but not to change it. It would just mean reliving the tragedy endlessly, over and over."

"Do you think he's found a way to change things?"

Aaron Hotchner's concern for his youngest was evident in both his words and in the slouch of his shoulders.

"He may think so. But he's not thinking clearly. I doubt he can change things, and I doubt he realizes it."

No one knew better than Aaron Hotchner the consequences of realizing you were unable to save the one you loved. When time moved in a straight line, hurt and loss eventually morphed into healing, even if regret kept the process from completion. The unit chief himself served as evidence that one could learn to live with regret.

But to stay in that loop….to feel, over and over again, the fury and helplessness of having to watch that moment of loss and inadequacy…..to stay in that loop would leave one bereft of hope. It would be the very definition of having a non-life.

And Hotch, familiar with helplessness, and unwilling to be victimized by it again, was determined that he would not let it take one of his own.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 5** _

"Hey, Pretty Boy, you still working through that pile?"

Once again Morgan had found Reid in the round table room.

"Not  _that_  pile, Morgan. That one was two piles ago. This is a new one. Plus," Reid shot his friend a look, "a few more snuck in when you thought I wasn't watching."

Morgan didn't even bother to deny it. It was well known that he and, when she was still with the team, Emily Prentiss, would regularly slip a few extra files into the pile on Reid's desk.

Unabashed, Morgan went on. "Well, you must be ready for a break, right?"

Reid sat back, twirling his pen and studying his colleague. He squinted his distrust at Morgan.

"What are you up to?"

"Who, me?" Morgan put his hand to his chest. "What am I up to?"

The young genius profiler noticed the absence of denial.

"You're not very good at this, you know."

"What am I not good at?" Morgan tried to ooze righteous indignation.

"You're up to something, and you don't want me to know."

"Pretty Boy, why would you say that?"

"When have you ever just stopped by to hang out with me?"

Morgan had to regroup.  _C'mon, you do this for a living. What if he was a witness?_

He decided he would try to employ his professional skills. Mingle truth with conjecture.

"Kid, your memory must be going. Because I seem to remember having a little talk with you, in this very room, just yesterday. So maybe I thought I'd stop by and see how you were doing today. Or are you just worried I'll find out you've been up to something besides those files?"

Morgan wasn't exactly sure what reaction he'd expected from Reid…..but he was positive it wasn't the one he got. The younger man just smiled cryptically.

"Does it look like I'm doing anything else? But you're right, you did drop in on me yesterday. And, if I didn't think to say it then…..thanks, Morgan. You're a good friend."

_I_ am _a good friend? Or I_ was _a good friend?_ There was something about the statement that unsettled Morgan, but he wasn't sure why.

"Does that mean you're feeling a little better?"

"It means you helped me think things through. And that made me feel better…..yes."

Morgan couldn't put his finger on it, but there  _was_  something different about Reid today. He  _was_  a little….brighter, maybe. There seemed to be a little more life in him.

_He does seem better. Maybe I let Baby Girl get to me. Maybe I jumped on a bandwagon that didn't exist._  But he had something else to consider _. If I did, Hotch jumped on it right alongside me. And he doesn't do that._

He was no good at small talk. Not with someone who didn't follow sports, anyway. Morgan knew he was under orders from Hotch to keep an eye on Reid but, he thought, a little delegating might not be out of order. He decided to go in search of one of the women. They always seemed to know how to relate to Reid.

_Maybe they can keep an eye on him._

"All right, Kid. I can see you'd rather get your work done. If you change your mind, I'll be in my office."

_Right after I call in the reinforcements._

* * *

He found JJ in the bullpen, a late arrival this morning.

"Here's our Pennsylvania Petite, finally. Where were you?"

She looked up from the report she'd been reading.

"Spring assembly at school. Henry was the sun."

Morgan chuckled. "Makes sense, I guess, since he's a blondie like his mother. How did he do?"

She laughed, remembering. "He was great. Except when the kids playing the flowers forgot to stand up when they were supposed to. Then the sun started shouting "Grow! Grow!" at them."

Her colleague smiled, vaguely amused, but sure he would never really understand exactly what was so entertaining about school assemblies. He decided to get right to his task.

"Did Hotch talk to you?"

"No. Was he looking for me?"

Morgan knew that Hotch was concerned about JJ as well as about Reid. But he thought the potential issues with Reid trumped any other concerns. He decided to take it into his own hands.

"I guess I can tell you about it. Remember when I asked you if you'd noticed anything strange with Reid…"

JJ tried to squelch the roll of her eyes that seemed to come to her reflexively. Not because of annoyance, this time, but because of guilt. After that conversation with Morgan, and realizing how concerned her older colleague was, she'd paid special attention to Reid. And she'd seen it too. And somehow known that it had been there, all along, unacknowledged by her.

_Me. His 'best friend'. I totally missed it.  
_

JJ wasn't proud of herself. Even though she'd finally seen that something was wrong with Reid, it had come about only because of her desire to avoid those other thoughts that had been begging for attention. It had been her avoidance of the topic of death, and her reaction to it, that had turned her thoughts in Reid's direction the past few days.

_Your life is too busy_ , her defensive self had offered.  _You don't spend as much time with him as you used to. Of course you wouldn't notice._

_But I should have known he would need me_ , her responsible self replied.  _He was so broken after she died. How could I have let him drift on his own?_

And then her realistic self pulled both sides together.

_Your entire life has changed in the past few years. You're married. You have, essentially, a new job, with new responsibilities. Of course your other relationships would change, along with your priorities. It doesn't mean you don't still care about him. It's just different, that's all.  
_

But she still hadn't felt good about it. She'd always prided herself on her loyalty. Where had it been, for Spence?

It took her only seconds to recall the entire internal conversation and turn her attention back to Morgan, who was still speaking.

"Well, I had a little talk with him yesterday, and…."

He summarized his now not-so-private conversation with Reid, along with Garcia's supposition, and the reactions of the rest of the team, watching the shock slowly settle into JJ's features.

"What are you saying? That Hotch thinks that's what's happening?"

JJ measured the gravitas of the situation against her unit chief's reaction, trusting his judgment implicitly.

"He thinks we need to look into it. He's got Rossi calling Los Alamos, and Garcia is checking to see if Reid's been in touch with them."

"But….Morgan, it  _hurt_  him, the last time. It took him forever to recover from it. Everything about it was frightening."

JJ flashed on the experience. She'd been physically attached to Reid during one of his reverberations, and terrified by the sensation, and by not understanding what was happening. And then she'd been terrified at the thought of losing him.

"I know. I remember it too. But I think he's hurting too much to care right now."

_Hurting and alone._  Without either of them saying it aloud, both sets of thoughts had gone in the same direction.

Something else Morgan had said penetrated, and the brows went up on JJ's face.

"Hotch told Garcia to go into Spence's phone records?"

If it had ever been done before….this kind of intra-team surveillance….she didn't know about it.

Morgan nodded, acknowledging the facts as well as his female teammate's reaction to the whole thing.

"I think Hotch wanted to brief you himself, but…."

_But he was worried about me, too, after we talked yesterday_.

Aloud, JJ assured Morgan, "It's all right. I'm sure he'll be fine with you telling me."

And she vowed not to distract her unit chief any further from dealing with this more pressing problem.

"So," Morgan was finally getting around to his original purpose, "Hotch wants me to keep Pretty Boy in my sights. But the Kid can tell something is up when I just start hanging around with him. So, I was wondering….."

She was already pushing her chair back. "Don't worry, I'll stay with him."  _It's the least I can do._

"Great." The relief was evident on Morgan's face. " I think you'll only have to keep him busy for a little while. Hotch is sending him over to help Blake with a seminar she's guesting at, over at Georgetown. While they're gone, the rest of us will meet."

JJ wasn't all that comfortable with the idea. "Morgan….why can't we just ask him? Why do all of this behind his back?"

"JJ, you know how much he likes to ramble. If he wanted us to know about this, don't you think we already would? Do you want to come into work some day to find out he's just disappeared?"

She shivered the thought away. "Of course not. But I don't want him to think we don't trust him. Or that he can't trust us."

"Don't worry. I think Hotch just wants us all to be prepared. Then, if he decides to talk to us, we'll be ready."

"Ready, " she said, almost to herself, "for what?"

* * *

Suddenly shy about intruding on her best friend, JJ raised her hand to knock on the open door jamb of the round table room. She stopped her hand in mid-arc when she saw Reid. He was furiously writing something on a yellow legal pad of paper, so completely lost in concentration that he apparently hadn't even heard the clack of her heels on the floor as she approached.

She stood for a few seconds, watching him, and profiling the table. He'd pushed his stack of files away and was surrounded by papers obviously torn from the same pad he was writing on. It seemed obvious he was working on something other than official business.

After a bit, she knocked and proceeded into the room.

"Hey," she said, "why are you hiding up here?" Meaning it to sound like a friendly tease.

He startled, and gathered his papers into a single pile. She could see that at least a few of them were covered in figures.

"JJ, what are you doing here?"

She put on her best smile, the one that always seemed to put one on his face as well.

"I believe that ball is in your court?"

He acknowledged it. "I just came up here to spread out a little." The same excuse he'd given Morgan.

"I can see that. What are you working on?" Wondering if he would tell her, almost sure he wouldn't.

"Nothing…..nothing special, that is." He knew she'd seen the papers, and tried to deflect. "I was just running some equations. It helps me stretch my brain a little, you know? Helps me think better, before I get back to reading consults."

She knew he actually did do this sometimes. Maybe Morgan was wrong. But….the vibe was there. He was answering too quickly, almost as though he was trying to get the conversation over with. But she chose not to push him. She'd come armed with her own distraction.

"Oh. Well, to answer your question, I came up here looking for you. I have something I promised I would show you."

She slid out the chair next to Reid and sat down, pulling her cell phone from a pocket.

"Your own Little Mister Sunshine said I was to be sure to show these pictures to his Uncle Spence, the very minute I got to work today."

_And then, of course, I forgot._

Reid smiled at the reference to his godson. "Little Mister Sunshine?"

He hadn't been to JJ's in quite a while, and neither of them had really noticed, each distracted by their own issues. But, it seemed, Henry had.

JJ explained about the school assembly, and then recounted the part about the sun yelling at the flowers, and Reid laughed.

"He's not just Little Mister Sunshine. He's Little Mister 'In Charge', just like his mother."

She feigned indignation. "Hey, I resent that. I think."

He was still smiling, but his words were sincere.

"No, you don't. Or, you shouldn't. You're a great mom, JJ. And a great agent. You should be proud of both of those things. And Henry should be proud, as well."

She should have been happy to hear it from him. The compliment. The approval. But he'd gotten too serious, too quickly. It felt like it carried an urgency that it shouldn't have.

_Like he needs to say it, now, so I'll hear it._

It wasn't entirely out of character for Reid, in the past year. As reserved as he'd become, when he did speak, it was with very little humor, or superficiality. It was almost as though he was afraid he wouldn't be given another chance to say the things he wanted people to hear. Deep inside, JJ had recognized the reason. He'd been robbed of his chance to say the most important thing to Maeve, and he feared the same might happen with anyone, and everyone, else close to him.

And yet, this felt different. _Maybe I'm just projecting. Maybe because Morgan's convinced me that he's thinking about leaving us._

She tried to bring a lighter note back to the conversation.

"Well, anyway, his teacher wanted to know who's been talking to Henry. Seems he wanted to play the role of the sun so he could make the plants 'do photosynthesis'." Making finger quotes.

Reid laughed. "He actually said that? Photosynthesis?"

She nodded, laughing at the memory of her conversation with Henry's teacher. "She said it took him about thirty seconds to get it all out, but he was very precise, and pronounced everything exactly." She nudged Reid with her elbow. "Nice going, Godfather. Teaching my kid to show off with five syllable words."

"I don't care how many syllables they are, as long as he understands them. Henry is very bright, JJ. More than most kids his age, I think."

She smiled at Reid's pride and investment in her son.

"He is a smartie, isn't he? It's a good thing he has his Uncle Spence to teach him. I'm not sure I could keep up."

Hoping Henry's Uncle Spence was planning on being around to teach him for a very long time to come.

Reid deflected the compliment. "He gets his smarts from you. I just cultivate them, that's all."

"I count on it, Spence."

Her tone held an intensity that was incongruent with the rest of the conversation, drawing Reid's eyes to hers. For a long moment, they each silently probed the face of the other, seeking and conveying something that neither was prepared to put into words.

It might have lasted longer, but Alex poked her head into the room.

"Oh…sorry. Am I interrupting something?"

They'd both startled, but then collected themselves. "Not at all," answered Reid. "Is it time to go?"

"Yes. The seminar starts in a hour, but I'm worried about traffic…"

After they'd gone, JJ noticed that Reid had left his files behind on the table, but made sure to pick up and take his pile of papers. She'd never actually been able to quite make out what was written on them.

* * *

"All right, what have we got?" Hotch looked around the conference room at the remaining four members of his team. "Garcia?"

"Sir….I really feel bad about this, it feels like I was spying on a member of my family, and I know we all promised we wouldn't use our skills on each other, and….."

"Garcia." Less patience in his voice this time.

"Yes, sir. Okay. Well, I looked at his cell phone records, and found a few things, but not much. But then I remembered…..did you know he still has a land line? Who has a land line these days…."

Morgan, JJ and Rossi said as one, "Garcia.."

"Right. Get to it. All right. So, he's called New Mexico at least sixteen times in the past nine months, mostly from home at first, but lately he's made more cell calls, and they're coming closer together in time. And he's gotten about half as many incoming calls from Los Alamos, also increased in number recently."

The others looked at each other as Rossi leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands behind his head. He was about to confirm their reasons to worry.

The BAU founder spoke. "That jives with what I learned. I spoke with Dr. Sterling at Los Alamos. He said he'd been in touch with Reid on and off since the original incident, picking his brain about what he'd experienced, and taking advantage of Reid's intelligence to run some problems by him. They've been trying to move the project forward in a way that minimizes the potential brain damage. And then some gobbledygook about working out conservation issues, or something like that."

Give Rossi a good crime to solve any day, and he was happy. But a scientific puzzle put him to sleep.

JJ remembered Dr. Sterling as one of the few people who'd actually seemed to care what happened to Reid during that time in their lives.

"So, it was Dr. Sterling who started the exchange?"

Rossi shrugged. "Don't know. Remember, Reid was going out there for months afterward, for debriefing and testing."

They all nodded, acknowledging it. They'd taken turns going with their genius, unwilling to leave him unprotected in that environment.

"It's a good thing it didn't cause him any brain damage then," uttered Morgan, who'd been more than willing to damage someone else's brain, if it had.

Hotch ran his eyes over the rest and decided it was time they be made aware of something.

"That's not entirely true. He did have some damage."

JJ's eyes shot in his direction. "What do you mean? What happened?"

"His IQ fell to…" he looked in a file he was holding, " ….to 178."

Seeing the others look at each other, not sure if they should be impressed that their genius was only slightly less of a genius, Hotch added, "That's a five percent drop. In IQ points, it's a considerable difference."

JJ was concerned, even after the fact, for Reid. "Hotch…..how did he take the news?"

"There was nothing to be done about it, by the time we learned it. But, " and Hotch gave a rare half-smile at the memory, " he did tell me he read six extra books that week."

Garcia was in mourning for her friend's loss. "Oh, my poor sweet boo. Trying to make up for it by cramming in more information. And he never even told us about it."

They knew Reid saw his intelligence as his greatest contribution to the team's work. They could only imagine how challenged he must have felt when he'd thought that intelligence was leaving him.

Hotch had some words of consolation for them.

"Well, I don't know that cramming accounted for it….but the drop was transient. For about eighteen months afterward. Then he made slow progress back up."

"He's at 187 again?" Rossi surprised himself with how much he was rooting to hear a 'yes'.

"He is. That was the last time I spoke with Dr. Sterling. And I remember him telling me that they were happy to learn that the damage might be reversible. At the same time, they were concerned that repeated tessering might inflict damage similar to repeated concussions. And that  _isn't_  reversible."

JJ heard the threat there. "So, if he's thinking about trying to go back, he could suffer damage that's permanent?"

"And more severe," acknowledged Hotch. "Cumulative."

Morgan addressed his next question to Rossi. "So, did Sterling say anything about why they've been talking so much lately?"

Rossi tented his fingers in front of him. "Reid hasn't said anything to him directly about wanting to tesser. It's all been hypotheticals. But our boy has been very interested in helping them figure out how to tesser to a specific point in time."

He didn't have to spell it out for them. Reid wanted to tesser to save Maeve.

JJ turned to her unit chief.

"Hotch, we can't let him…"

"He's a grown man, JJ. He can make his own decisions."

"But he's not thinking clearly...and it will hurt him! You said so yourself, Sterling thinks he'll have permanent damage."

Garcia had been quietly pondering the possibility of another risk. Now she spoke it to the others.

"What if he goes back and can't return? What if he gets stuck there?"

Her question was met with stunned silence as they each considered the many negatives to Reid's pursuit...and the poignancy of why he was pursuing it.

Finally, Morgan pushed back his chair and rose.

"I'd be one hell of a crappy friend if I didn't talk to him about this. I think we  _all_  need to talk to him. We need to have an intervention."


	6. Chapter 6

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 6** _

Reid knocked softly on the open door.

"Hotch? You wanted to see me?"

Aaron Hotchner knew there was no way to keep the rest of the team's emotions from spilling out. Eventually, inevitably, they would all want to talk to Reid. But he didn't think it fair to Reid to have a group discussion come without warning. So he'd texted the young man last night, and asked him to come in early this morning, to meet with his unit chief.

Hotch looked up to see an expression of curiosity on Reid's face. No consternation, no suspicion. He knew it wasn't likely to last long.

"Sit down, Reid. Thanks for coming in early." Hotch waved him to the small settee and took a chair opposite him, not wanting the desk between them.

"Is something wrong?"

Over the years, they'd had only a few of these very private discussions in Hotch's office, two of them surrounding the real and feigned deaths of two women important in Reid's life. If dread had started to seep into him at the summons for this current meeting, it would have been understandable. And yet, he didn't appear fazed. Hotch wished he could say the same about himself. How, exactly, did one bring up the subject of time travel?

Directly. Maybe.

"Reid, it's come to my attention that you have been in contact with Dr. Sterling at Los Alamos."

Anyone but an expert profiler would have missed the subtle changes in Reid's expression. The tightening of his lips, the steeliness that had entered his eyes.

"I've been in touch with him since it happened. I thought you knew that." Sticking with the superficial truth.

Hotch had expected no less. He simply acknowledged his awareness of the ongoing contact. But then he pushed.

"I understand there might have been some advances made in the process?"

Now Reid was squinting at him. "Some. Why are you asking me about this, Hotch?"

The senior profiler heard the defenses falling solidly into place. He would just have to get over, or under, or through them.

"There seems to be some concern that you are considering offering yourself as a trial subject."

Hardness settling into the young man's face now.

"Is this official FBI business?"

A mental argument took place inside Aaron Hotchner's head. The fact that their involvement with the project had begun with a case could technically be stretched into interpreting any subsequent involvement as an FBI matter. He might be able to pull rank, and force the issue. But it was a stretch, and it fell back to a technicality. The real concern here was personal. Maybe he should just admit it, and appeal to Reid's emotional connection with his colleagues.

Spencer Reid was a profiler, too. He could see the indecision in his superior's face, and decided to risk challenging him.

"Is it? Because if it's not…"

Hotch put up a palm to stop him.

"Calm down, Reid. It's not official business. It's just that…as you are aware, you are one of a team of profilers. And, while I acknowledge it's been policy not to profile one another, I also realize that it happens on a daily basis. Several of your colleagues….several of  _us_ …." Might as well totally personalize it. "…..have noticed some changes in your behavior recently. Coupled with the conversations with Los Alamos, we're concerned…. _I'm_  concerned….about what you may be thinking."

Now the internal battle was taking place within Reid. He appreciated the concern, and especially that it was coming from Hotch. But he still had too much of the obstinate rebel inside him, tired of being told what to do by authority.

"What I'm thinking right now is that it's interesting you would know about my conversations with Dr. Sterling. Has Garcia been into my phone records?"

This was going as Hotch had feared it would, and hoped it wouldn't. He could only be relieved that he'd chosen to do it privately. This conversation, taking place with the others, would threaten the function of his team.

"At my direction, she looked at your phone records, yes." He didn't see the need to offer Rossi's call to Los Alamos as well.

Reid wanted to be outraged. He wanted to be resentful at the invasion of his privacy. But he knew his unit chief too well, and respected him too much. He had, after all, turned to the man with the most pressing crisis of his life, and shared the most private details. He trusted Hotch, and he couldn't ignore that.

The unit chief watched as the bluster went out of his young genius. It appeared that honesty, and the true affection that existed between them, might have turned the tide.

Reid sank back into the cushion, retreating from the confrontation both physically and emotionally.

"I just wanted to know if it might be possible. I couldn't make a difference for her then…..I thought, what if I could do it now? What if there's still a chance?"

He hadn't even explained the context, so certain was he that Hotch knew what had spurred his interest.

"What if you can't? You already know it can harm you, you've lived through it. It's true you've recovered, but there's no guarantee it can happen again. In fact, there's reason to believe it won't."

Too late, he realized he'd given it away, as Reid challenged him yet again.

"Have you been talking with Dr. Sterling?"

Hotch sighed in resignation. "Rossi called him. I asked him to."

Reid held his face in his hand, shaking his head. "Is everyone in on this?"

Hotch waited for him to look up again before responding. "They want to have a meeting with you. They want to talk to you about it."

"They want to talk me out of it, you mean. What, is this some kind of intervention? Why is everyone so convinced I'm wrong?"

"They understand, Reid. But they're concerned about you. As am I. I'm not convinced you're thinking things through rationally."

The younger man didn't try to deny it. He simply dismissed it.

"Are feelings less valid than logic?"

Part of Hotch was proud of Reid. Once upon a time, as a young genius protégé to a troubled genius mentor, he would have argued the contrary. As emotionally fragile as he could be at that time in his life, Spencer Reid tried to shroud it in logic. That he could make an argument against it now was emblematic of the changes in the young man over the intervening years.

And it was truth. The unit chief could only acknowledge it.

"Of course not. But you can't let your feelings cloud your judgment about the risk."

"Let me ask you this, Hotch. If you thought there was a way to have gotten there ten minutes earlier…..even knowing it carried a great risk…what would you do?"

He didn't have to give the context. They both knew what he was talking about. And they both knew what Hotch's answer would be.

* * *

The round table room was considerably less filled with chatter than usual. Reid sipped his coffee and thumbed through a file, while the others fiddled with their phones or simply sat and stared at one another, as they waited for Hotch and the start of the meeting. Reid had agreed to the group discussion, wanting to get past what he viewed as a necessary hurdle.

Soon Hotch breezed into the room and closed the door behind him. There was no need for any of their other FBI colleagues to hear the ensuing discussion.

"Good morning. We don't have an urgent consult at the moment, so we will be able to attend to some other business."

He looked around at the others, who were each casting surreptitious glances in Reid's direction, anticipating the discussion to come.

"This morning, I met with Reid and confirmed his interest in the Tesseract Project. I informed him that members of the team had concerns, and he has agreed to address them with all of you at this time."

He'd purposely made it formal, knowing that Reid wasn't the only one struggling with his emotions at the moment.

"Who would like to start?"

Morgan wasn't intimidated. "I'll start." He turned to look directly at Reid. "Pretty Boy, are you thinking about offering yourself as a guinea pig? Are you thinking about tessering?"

Reid kept his hands busy unraveling a paper clip. "I wouldn't use the term 'guinea pig'. But, yes, I've offered to be a test subject for the project."

"Kid….why? I mean….I get why, but…..this is still pretty science fictiony, isn't it? Time travel? What are the chances it could work?"

"And what are the chances you could be hurt?" JJ couldn't stop herself. She knew what he wanted to do. But all she could think of was what it could do to him.

He'd been about to argue the point with Morgan, but the audible concern in JJ's voice shook him. He addressed her first.

"I'll be okay."

"You don't know that, Reid," admonished Rossi, who saw the turmoil on the faces of all of his younger teammates. "She's right to be concerned."

Reid swallowed thickly and cast his eyes at the table, while Morgan took another shot.

"How do you know you can change anything? And , even if you can….what if you make it worse?"

Reid's head shot up again, angry now. "Worse, Morgan? What could possibly be worse?!"

Hotch saw things beginning to spiral and tried to infuse a note of calm.

"Let's keep our heads here, all right? I think Morgan was trying to ask about the odds of achieving a specific outcome, even if you are able to travel to the desired time and location."

Reid slumped back in his seat. "Unknown."

Alex Blake decided to help Hotch defuse the remaining tension.

"Reid, I wasn't with the team…before. Can you tell me about it?"

The young man's recounting of the episode provided the calming interlude they'd needed.

"…..I didn't have any lasting memory of it, supposedly because they returned me, essentially, before I'd actually left. But the reverberations were different. That was more a physical jarring of a memory in my brain, or so they explained it. I didn't physically go anywhere….right?"

He'd looked to JJ for confirmation.

As happened every time she thought of it, JJ shivered with the memory.

"Your body was vibrating, and you became unresponsive. But you didn't actually disappear….not unless we both did, and I don't remember it."

Alex was confused. "What?"

"I was holding on to him when one of the reverberations happened. I could feel the vibrations going right through him and into me."

"My God! What happened?"

"It stopped. I kept calling to him, and eventually, it stopped."

"She brought me back." It was what Reid had said at the time as well. "I could feel myself slipping away to another time….to a memory….a bad one….but then I heard JJ's voice…..and it was like I followed her out."

"Thank God." JJ reached across and squeezed Reid's arm. "But, Spence…..did I understand you correctly? Are you saying that, if you actually tesser, that you will  _physically_  travel there? That you'll be gone from here?"

Her voice had risen in pitch as she'd said it, because she could already see the answer in his face. He would, in fact, be gone.

Rossi had seen the answer too. And then remembered something from his conversation with Dr. Sterling.  _Might as well confess._

"I spoke with Dr. Sterling, Spencer. Ah, I can see that you knew that already. Well, anyway, he told me a lot of things I didn't quite understand. But one of them had to do with the physical aspect of tessering. Something about ….conservation?"

"Conservation of mass and energy. It's considered a scientific principle. That there is a finite amount of mass and energy in the universe, so that, to displace some of it, there must be an equal and opposite reaction." Reid gave the most simplistic explanation he could.

Until now, Garcia had been silent. But, of all the team, she was the one who'd given the most prior thought to time travel.

"Does that mean that, if you travel back in time, you displace something else? That there's an unexpected reaction?"

Reid had his index finger up, in professorial pose. "We don't think so. We did, but we don't think so any more. You see, we used to think that tessering…..which is really just moving a specific set of subatomic particles through different quantum orbits at the same time…..we used to think that it would, necessarily, displace an identical number of subatomic particles and move them forward in time. But we couldn't know what those subatomic particles were, so we couldn't know what kinds of changes might be made."

In intellectual earnest, he'd almost forgotten why he was giving the lesson. He looked around the table to make sure they were all still with him.

"And it looks like that is exactly the case with tessering through space. That the particles moved in the process of tessering end up displacing other particles. But it all happens in the same instant of time, and since everything is always moving anyway…..it's a negligible effect."

Several of them nodded, following. The rest just listened.

"But time is a completely different thing. You see, we have to get outside the idea of linear time. Remember I told you that a tesser was, essentially, wrinkling the timeline to bring two distant points in time together. But there's another perspective that's even more important. That's the perspective of eternity, or being outside of time."

"Kid…"

"Bear with me, Morgan, I'm almost there. Go back to imagining time as a line. Okay?"

They nodded.

"Okay. Then, look at it from above….or beyond, or whatever you want to say. Imagine events happening at various points all along that line. But to you , looking at it from a distance, it all looks like it's happening at once." He looked around again. "Do you see?"

More nods. "Well, if we add that dimension to the mix, the conservation of mass and energy doesn't matter any more. Because it doesn't matter what point you tesser from, or to. It's all along that same timeline, and all inside that one, larger universe."

He looked around again, pleased with the lesson, and with his pupils. But one of those pupils was less pleased.

"But Spence….you'd be gone? Physically?" JJ hadn't been able to get past that point.

He turned to look at her directly. "Yes. I would physically travel back….but it might not be permanent."

Her eyes widened. "But it  _could_  be permanent? You could just be….gone?"

It had saddened him too, realizing. In reclaiming the one relationship, he would risk all of the others in his life.

"But maybe not. And it might not even look like I'm gone at all. Not if I go back and return before I left."

Rossi had another question. "I don't understand what would be different this time. We're told they actually tessered you before. For about six months before that time we were in New Mexico, right? And you had no memory of it, and nothing from the past was changed. What would be different this time?"

Reid nodded, acknowledging that Rossi's question was a good one.

"I've discussed that at length with Dr. Sterling. It's all very complicated, but those tessers were short test bursts that weren't targeted at anything in particular, except visiting the past. We think that, if we can calculate a precise point in time, and if my brain is sufficiently conditioned, I can have awareness when I'm in the past. And that will allow me to make an intervention."

Hotch's brow furrowed. "What do you mean, 'conditioned'? Have you already been preparing for this?"

Reid looked an apology at having withheld the information. "I've been using one of the portable units for short vibratory inductions."

"What?" "Are you serious?" "Kid!" "Spence!"

He hurried to clarify. "On my own time. Never when we've been actively on a case."

JJ remembered the very recent case when he'd supposedly been waiting at the fax machine for hours, and reminded him of it.

"What was that?"

"I just stepped out to take a call from Dr. Sterling, and got a little carried away with the conversation. That's all. I promise."

"Kid," Morgan sounded calmer than he had since beginning of the meeting, whether from resignation or because he'd chosen a new tack, no one could say. "What point in time are you aiming for?"

Reid gave a quick half smile, not quite sure he'd found an ally.

"I'm still working on that. I'm thinking, maybe when I was going to meet her for dinner. I know we don't need to be afraid of Bobby now. But she wouldn't know that, so I wouldn't frighten her by having her come into the restaurant. I could just call her and tell her I'd meet her outside."

"And have Diane follow you?" asked Rossi.

"And what about the Replicator?" added Garcia.

He conceded their points "I know, you're right. That might not be the best time. Maybe I'd go back to early in our relationship. Maybe to our first phone call. Maybe I could tell her about Diane. But I think if I waited longer, it would be too risky. I can't let it get as far as the loft…..I can't…" He shook his head, staring into the past. "I can't."

JJ reached out for his hand, as Alex had another idea.

"Have you thought what might happen if you told her about Diane? That Diane was her stalker, and not Bobby?"

He wasn't sure where she was going. "What?"

"You might create a present where they're still together. Maeve might live, and be married to Bobby."

All of them were shocked at the realization. But Alex was right. In seeking to reclaim a future he'd so badly wanted, Reid might inadvertently change the present in completely unexpected ways.

None of them noticed the tear that slid down Rossi's face as his mind went in a completely different direction.

_Or you could go back and tell us about the Replicator. And I would still have Erin._


	7. Chapter 7

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 7** _

The man who'd founded the BAU had seen more human anguish than he would ever be able to record in a whole library full of books. This early spring evening, he pushed back from his keyboard, and his most recent attempt to capture some of that anguish for posterity, all in the hope of preventing at least one more person from experiencing it.

Rossi swiveled his chair so he could look out at the landscaped lawn of Quantico. The floor of the BAU was quiet, most of the others already having left for the day. As he stared at the trees dancing in a light breeze, his thoughts returned to the morning meeting and Reid's seemingly rash plan to try to change the past. And he remembered his own, unexpected, emotional reaction to it.

To Rossi, it was all the stuff of fairy tales and science fiction. To give it credence would be to live in a world of fantasy. And yet…he'd found himself caught up in exactly that fantasy.

_If it were actually possible to go back, I could save Erin. Her children would still have their mother, instead of having to learn to live with her murder. We could be planning for a future, instead of burying a past._

But then another thought occurred to him.

_What about Carolyn? Maybe a cure could be found, and brought back to save her. And what about James? If he'd been born now, he might have lived. If I could take that medical knowledge back…_

And then the thoughts began to flood him. Face after face, victims and families…..all of them. Could it be different for all of them? But it would be too much for one man to accomplish, even if the tesseract turned out to be real. He couldn't possibly save all of them. How would he choose?

Rossi shook himself out of it, realizing the futility of the exercise. Not that he really believed. But he knew a young man who did. And he hoped it wasn't too late to seek him out.

* * *

"Rossi, you're still here? I thought everyone had left."

Reid tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the tone of suspicion from his voice.

"Don't worry, Spencer, I'm not babysitting you. Hotch meant it when he said he would trust you not to do anything major without telling him."

Reid's shoulders fell as they released a pent up tension. "Oh. Well, why are you here so late, then?"

"I had an idea I wanted to get down for the book. I thought I'd only be a minute, but then I got on a roll...and here I still am." Rossi moved all the way into the conference room where he'd found his young colleague. "What about you? What's keeping you here?"

Reid shrugged. "Same thing…sort of. I was working on an equation, and I thought I might have had a breakthrough….."

"And?"

The younger man shook his head. "And nothing. It didn't pan out."

Rossi pulled out a chair and sat at the table. "So, just how close do you think you are?"

Not entirely sure which he was hoping to hear: that the project would have to be scuttled, or that the man sitting across from him would soon be able to try to save the woman he loved.

"It's hard to say. We've made some great headway over the past six months, but we've got some more to iron out. We're not convinced we've got the full methodology for being able to reach an exact point in time." Reid thought about it a moment more, then corrected himself. "Actually we're sure we  _can't_  be that exact. But we think we can get to within a year, or less."

Rossi tried not to let his natural skepticism show as he absorbed the information. Better to talk to Reid on his own ground.

"So, you might go back in time...but you might be up to a year too early, or too late?"

Reid nodded, acknowledging the problem. "We're going to try to narrow it, but yes, that's true."

"So…..you could go into the past…..at great personal risk…..and be too late to change it anyway?"

The expression on Reid's face was almost impossible to interpret. But the experienced profiler was able to discern his young companion's frustration about the situation, intermingled with the look of challenge that said he would brook no attempt to talk him out of it….and that ever-present residua of grief that had never quite left him, even once, over the past year.

"I have to try, Rossi. I….I have to.."

Rossi pushed back and started a slow stroll around the room. He did his best pontificating when he was on his feet.

"You know, I was ready to dismiss the whole idea as crazy, but then I started thinking…what if I could go back and change the past year? What if I could save Erin, give her back to her children?"

Reid started to interrupt him, but Rossi spoke right over him.

"Then I thought….what if I could go back and warn Erin and Alex about the fallout from the Amerithrax case? What if I could prevent John Curtis from becoming the Replicator?"

Again, Reid opened his mouth, and again shut it without uttering a word, when Rossi kept going.

"And then I thought….what about if I could go back and warn all of our victims? Or, better yet, what if I could go back and change the childhoods of so many of our perpetrators? Think of all the lives that could be saved, Spencer."

Reid was too intelligent not to have come up with all of the very same what-ifs. But he was also too emotional to allow himself to pay attention to them. He was focused only on Maeve, and all that he hadn't done for her.

"I know. I know there's no end to it. I know I'm being selfish. I know I should be trying to save others too….it's just…."

Rossi sat down next to him again. "It's just that you loved her. And you couldn't save her. And you blame yourself."

"Who else should I blame?"

The look on Rossi's face answered for him.

"Diane? No, Rossi. She was just the weapon. I lost Maeve because I wasn't assertive enough to go ahead and do what I should have done. I should have found Diane long before she took Maeve. I should have insisted Maeve let me investigate…or I should have just gone ahead and done it. But I was afraid. I'd never had anybody who was just…..mine, you know? Who was interested in  _me_ , just because. And I was afraid to do something she'd asked me not to, because I was afraid to lose that. And I lost it anyway. I lost her. And she lost her life."

It had come out of him with such vehemence, that Rossi felt pushed back in his chair, as if forced by the power of Reid's emotion. Which was still pouring out.

"Can't you see, Rossi? It's my fault she doesn't have a future. I  _have_  to risk mine. I owe it to her."

Rossi leaned forward again, and rested his lips against his folded hands, trying to collect his thoughts. Then he rubbed his face, and began.

"You know, in my life I've had a great many things to regret. Failed marriages, the deaths of several of the women I've loved, the death of my son….and far, far too many deaths I've not been able to prevent, lives taken by killers I've failed to catch, or caught too late….or didn't even try to catch at all. Mistakes in every aspect of my life. If I could go back and change those things…..maybe I would. But, if I did….wouldn't I also change everything else? Would I save one person only to lose another? If I'd stayed with my very first love, would I have missed something wonderful with the others?"

Reid was listening intently.

"Life is full of regret, Spencer. Full of opportunity as well. We can only know what  _did_  happen, and find a way to live with it. We can't ever know what might have been…..because it never was."

"But what if it _could_ be…."

Rossi had put up a silencing hand. "Forget the physics of it for a minute. What does your study of philosophy tell you?"

Reid squinted at him. "What do you mean?"

"What does it tell you about the past, and the present, and the future?"

Rossi could see Reid's eyes moving, as he eidetically 'read' his text. "That there is only one past. Even if I could go back and change something, it would create a new, single past. There wouldn't be multiple choices."

"And what if that 'new' past created a 'new present'? And what if that 'new present' brought its own heartache?"

"I'm willing to risk it."

"What if that new heartache wasn't yours? What if it was someone else's heart that was broken?"

"How? Maeve would never hurt anyone. And I…."

"What if you don't come back?"

Reid was ready for that one. "I've thought about that. But the team would be fine without me. I think that's been demonstrated pretty well. And my mom doesn't recognize me half the time, anyway. There isn't anyone who depends on me."

Raised brows on Rossi's face. "There isn't?"

Reid didn't understand. "Who? Who would miss me?"

"You mean, besides all of us? Gee, I don't know. I think he's about three feet tall, blonde…..dresses like his favorite profiler?"

"Henry? All right, I'll concede that. I was going to talk to JJ about it anyway…."

"Speaking of…what about JJ?"

"What about her?"

"Didn't you notice her reaction this morning? She's terrified of something happening to you."

Reid shook his head. "She'll be fine. She has a family."

Rossi leaned his head back and looked down the end of his nose at the young man.

"You know, for a genius, you can be pretty dense."

"What do you mean?"

Not that he hadn't said the same thing to himself a few trillion times or so, about many different things. But he wasn't following Rossi.

"I mean...you seem to very easily dismiss the impact of your life on the lives of the people around you. These are people…..JJ, Henry…..Morgan, Hotch…all of us…..we are all people who have opened ourselves up to you, whether in friendship, or something else….it doesn't matter. We are  _all_  in relationship with you. And yet you seem to think you can just walk away from those relationships, and there will be no consequence to any of us."

In contrast to the rest of the conversation, _this_  was subject matter that was new to Reid. He hadn't considered it at all, and still wasn't convinced.

"But you all have other people in your lives, and other things going on. It will be okay. I won't matter."

Rossi just looked at him in resignation.

_You won't matter. You're thinking that because you think it's already true. You think you already don't matter_.  _You think you only mattered to Maeve._

He decided to give it one more try. "Do you remember what happened three years ago?"

"Three….oh. But that was different."

"How?"

"It was  _Emily_." As if that explained it.

"How did you feel?"

This was still a sensitive area for Reid. He'd never before felt such emotional devastation. Until last year, he'd never believed there could be anything worse.

"You know how I felt. But that was different. We thought she'd died."

"And how would your disappearance be any different? You'd still be gone from everyone's life."

"But I might still be alive. You could think that maybe I had made it, that I had changed things. That I was  _happy_."

The last few words had come out in such a wistful tone that the senior profiler was profoundly moved. It was a moment before he found his voice again. But not the words.

David Rossi could easily expound on any number of paraphilias, and hold his own in an exchange on a host of psychoses…but this discussion about time travel had become too circular, and it was making him dizzy.

He rose, and patted Reid's shoulder before heading for the door.

"Goodnight, Spencer. Maybe you can give a little thought to the things we talked about. Sleep on it. See if things look different in the morning."

_Maybe you can visit Maeve in your dreams again. And maybe she can convince you. Maybe she can let you go.  
_


	8. Chapter 8

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 8** _

The ensuing months were among the strangest the members of the team could ever remember.

None of them really believed Reid could achieve any of what he intended. They couldn't conceive of being able to move into the past, even given their prior experience in New Mexico. And even if they conceded that one could go there, they didn't believe the past could be changed. And they certainly didn't believe one could return from it.

To each member of the team, it seemed like they were saying a long goodbye to a dying friend.

Every interaction became precious, and laden with meaning, even the most simple of daily greetings and farewells. Alex Blake, newest to the team and still finding her place in its dynamic, noticed it the most. The others were simply too close to it to have perspective.

_They're learning not to take him….or anyone else...for granted. And that's not a bad thing._

It had been a long time since she'd seen an eye roll, and equally as long since she'd heard Derek Morgan rag on his younger friend. The former, she welcomed. The latter, not as much. Morgan's teasing of Reid had usually been affectionate, and received as such by its target. That it was no longer happening was but one element of the strangeness among them. And, despite their intentions, it was making Reid feel isolated.

Maybe it was understandable that Alex was the one he could speak with most freely about it. After all, she had been his original chosen sounding board about Maeve. He'd found it easier to share with someone with whom he had so much less history. She'd been supportive, but also objective. He counted on that these days.

* * *

The two of them remained in a borrowed Midwestern police conference room, charged with reviewing a stack of case files while the others went to various sites associated with the killings in their current case. Several cheerleaders for a professional football team had been found murdered.

Alex noticed the expression on Reid's face as their colleagues exited the room, headed for their assignments. The meeting had just ended with yet another example of the oddity of their interaction as a team. She decided it was time to say something.

Glancing sideways from the file in front of her, she started.

"Well, that was strange, wasn't it?"

"What?" Distracted, already half way through his own file.

"The football thing. You know…...the positions."

"What? That I got them wrong? Doesn't it make sense that somebody who runs the ball down the field would be called a forward? And the guy who catches the ball would be…."

She smiled, still amused. "…..a catcher. Yes, I guess it makes sense. But what I thought was strange was that Morgan didn't call you on it. It was a perfect opportunity for him."

He pushed the file away. "I know. And JJ didn't give me a hard time, either. She might know more about football than anyone." There was a sigh in his voice.

Suddenly Alex realized. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

He gave her a look. "Alex, even I know that pitchers and catchers are in baseball and softball. After all, I did win a game for our team, remember?"

"You sly little thing. Why?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I was just trying to find a way for us to feel normal. It's been a little…..weird, ever since…."

She nodded. "I've noticed it too. They're just reacting, Spencer."

"I know, but….I don't want to remember… _.this_. I want to remember us as we were. I want to remember  _them_  that way."

There was so much in what he'd just said that she didn't know where to start.

"You're talking like you don't expect to see them….us….again."

He shook his head. "I don't know. I don't know what will happen. But…if I don't see any of you again…and you don't see me….I just want us all to remember each other as we were."

She squinted at him. "But you think you'll still be  _able_  to remember….does that mean you think you'll be trapped in the past?"

"Trapped? Maybe. Or maybe it will just be a choice."

She was surprised, but realized she shouldn't have been. "You're saying you might choose to stay there….with Maeve."

"Only if I can be with her."

David Rossi wasn't the only one made dizzy by the concept of time travel. Alex expressed her struggle with it.

"Are you saying that you wouldn't simply go back, protect Maeve, and then still be with her in the present?"

There were so many possibilities to consider that Reid didn't think he could express them all. In truth, as powerful as his brain was, he couldn't even conceptualize them all. He stood and began pacing the room to work off some of the anxiety that always surfaced when he thought about it.

"We don't really understand everything about it, Alex. For instance, if Maeve survives in the past, we may be in an entirely different present. There's no guarantee I would still be part of the team."

"But the team would still exist?"

"We think the past would only change from the time I enter it, to now. So there would already have been a team, and I would have been a part of it."

She was starting to understand. A little.

"But you might not  _still_  be a part of it, if you impact the past."

"Right."

She immediately began thinking of all the potential additional victims of all the unsubs they'd caught since Maeve's death. Reid had contributed to the apprehension of each of those serial killers. How many more people would have been killed if he hadn't been a part of the team? If he succeeded in his plan, how many more  _would_  be killed?

But that wasn't the point of this conversation. She wanted to understand his mindset better.

"But you'd be alive? You'd just be living a different present?"

They caught each other's eyes. All he could do was shrug. "I don't know."

_You don't know. God_. Then she explored yet another possibility.

"And what if you don't succeed? You' might just return, and everything will be the same?"

"Maybe. Or…..I may not return at all. But not by choice."

"You may be trapped, or….."

"Or not. We only know that the scientists who tried it before didn't make it back." He didn't have to say it aloud. No one knew if they were dead or alive.

He expected her to argue with him that it was too dangerous, that he shouldn't risk his life, and he readied himself to rebut her. But she didn't go there.

"That's it, you know."

It was obvious he wasn't following her, so she continued.

"That's why they're acting that way. They feel like they're losing you. Permanently."

_Ah._ "Like I'm terminal."

She nodded, silent.

"But….Alex, I don't want them to remember me that way. Even if I'm 'terminal'. It's like, when somebody's dying, and you only remember that part of their lives. That's not the point. It shouldn't be about the end…..it should be about all the stuff that came before. The reasons we're all friends. The reasons we care about each other. All of the other memories. That's what's important. It's what I want to remember about  _them_. Not this….not how it's been lately."

She gave him a sad smile. "I don't know that there's a way to change that, Spencer. It's human nature. Maybe, in time…they'll get there."

Time. The great healer. And, it seemed, the great wounder.

* * *

His talk with Alex prodded Reid to accelerate his conditioning, so that he would be ready when the time came. Dr. Sterling had reported progress with a particularly stubborn equation, and there was reason to believe the final breakthrough was just around the corner. Reid felt like he had to put an end to the long vigil as soon as it was possible. It wasn't healthy for anyone on the team.

Finally, nearly seven months after that first difficult team meeting, Reid made a point of arriving to the BAU ahead of their scheduled morning meeting. He ran up the stairs and knocked on his unit chief's door.

"Come in!"

Reid turned the knob and stuck his head in. "Do you have a minute?"

Instantly, Hotch knew what it was about. He'd procured Reid's promise to tell him when the time came. Apparently, it had.

"Come in, Reid. What can I do for you?" Hoping he was wrong, sure he was not.

His voice held excitement tinged with regret as Reid explained.

"Dr. Sterling called last night. They're quite certain they've solved the targeting element. It was the last piece of the puzzle. So…it could be any time now."

The unit chief stared at his desk top for a moment, then raised his eyes to the young man in front of him.

"Are you sure about this?"

Reid appreciated the freedom Hotch had given him about the entire enterprise. He hadn't made the young profiler choose between his job and his longing. He hadn't openly expressed doubt since that first difficult conversation about it. He'd simply met Reid where he was, respected the scientist in him, and understood the man who'd lost the woman he'd loved.

"I am. I mean, I can't be sure of the outcome. That goes without saying. But I'm sure I have to try."

As much as he'd been hoping for a different response, Hotch had been prepared for this one.

"All right. We should tell the others. Do you have a definite date?"

Reid shook his head. "Dr. Sterling will let me know when he's ready."

"And you?"

"I'm ready."

Hotch sighed as he pushed back his chair. "We'll tell them now, then."

Reid remained in his seat. "Hotch…."

The unit chief could see the emotion rising in his young charge, and sat back down.

Reid was flushed, and had to compose himself before speaking.

"I….I just wanted to thank you. I know I haven't always been the easiest to deal with, and…..maybe I didn't always follow orders. But I always respected you. And I always felt respected."

It was the thing that had made its mark on the young genius. He'd been brought aboard as Jason Gideon's protégé. But his mentor had treated him as the child prodigy he'd been, and not as the man he'd been becoming. Aaron Hotchner had seen the man in him, and cultivated it, by affording Reid respect. Even in their tense moments, he'd never let go of that respect. And Reid had responded by constantly trying to live up to it.

Hotch opened his mouth to reply, but Reid wasn't done yet.

"And…..with this…you've been honest. I appreciate that. And, even if you haven't been able to bring yourself to fully support it…..I appreciate that you've not tried to stop me, or tell me I was crazy. I think the others took their cue from you."

The usual stiff posture of Aaron Hotchner melted into his chair. He rarely let down his defenses, but this was a unique situation, and it called for a unique response.

"To tell you the truth, Reid….part of me is jealous. If this could work…. But I have Jack, and I can't take the chance."

Reid nodded his understanding. The only good part of not being attached to anyone was the freedom it afforded one in decisions such as the one he'd had to make.

"I don't really know how this will play out, Hotch. But if I ever have the chance…."

The unit chief put up a hand to stop him.

"No, Reid. No. I've come to terms with it. I can't go back to revisiting the 'what-ifs', hoping for a different outcome. And I can't bring Jack there. We both need to keep moving forward."

Reid wished he could get himself to that same place where Aaron Hotchner and David Rossi resided. That comfort with the past. But, for him, it was simply too close, and too impelling. He had to try.

* * *

By agreement, it was Hotch who announced it to the team. Apart from an open sniffle from Garcia, the information was met with absolute silence, all eyes cast at the table in front of them. The room felt thick with emotion.

Reid raised his head and looked around at each of them in turn. Then he cleared his throat, gaining their attention.

"I don't have a definite date but, barring the unforeseen, it will probably be soon. So I just wanted to say….I just wanted to tell you all….."

His voice was breaking as he fought to continue. He had to swallow twice before speaking again.

"I just wanted to thank you all. For being my friends. For being so good at what you do. I think we all want to know that our lives have made a difference. So I want to make sure to tell you that yours have. They've made a huge difference in my life. Before….." He just shook his head, dismissing his early youth. "But after….after I became a part of this team… well…..just…thank you."

JJ abruptly pushed her chair back and raced out of the room, hand over mouth.

Alex looked around at the others and volunteered. "I'll go."

Reid sat back, head thrust down. He'd known it would be hard, but….he still didn't like being the cause of anyone's distress. Especially JJ's.

If the announcement hadn't sent Garcia wailing, JJ's reaction had. She pulled Reid up from his chair and threw her arms around him.

"My sweet baby genius! My sweet boo! How will we ever live without you?"

She dissolved into sobs, and was still crying when Morgan peeled her away from Reid and led her from the room.

The young man looked helplessly at the two most senior members of the team. Rossi tried to infuse some humor.

"That went well."

Reid was too miserable to appreciate the sarcasm.

"I never meant to hurt anyone….."

Hotch was already strategizing about how to keep his team from falling apart entirely. It started with assuring Reid.

"Give them time. They'll adjust. But we may need to think about the next step."

The next step. The final goodbye, when the tesseract would actually be attempted. Seeing his team react this morning, Hotch had reached a decision.

He'd been thinking about that final step. And he thought it was best done the same way he removed a bandaid. Ripped, all at once. Over before you had time to worry about the pain.

He'd decided. The team wouldn't be told when it was happening. When they next heard about it, it would already be a thing of the past.

Reid would already be gone.

* * *

_**A.N. Just FYI, for those interested, and while I'm remembering to mention it: my long-time avatar is a visual depiction of a tesseract.** _


	9. Chapter 9

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 9** _

Reid took an ineffective stab at getting through the files in front of him. His mind wasn't the only thing that wouldn't settle. Internally, he'd come to an emotional boil. A new feeling would bubble up each moment, battling for prominence with the ones that had come before, and the ones that followed.

He'd hurt them all, he knew that. He'd also known it was unavoidable. As isolated as he sometimes felt, he knew they cared about him. He even knew that they loved him, to varying degrees, and in varying ways. If there had ever been a question, it had been erased during this long prologue to the next chapter in his life's story. Maybe the last chapter.

Not knowing when the time would actually come would prove to be its own burden. He'd said his goodbye, made a point to tell them how he felt about them now, while he knew he could. But he was still here. And he might still be here tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that….

_Do I say goodbye again every day until it happens? Do I have to put all of us through that? Maybe I should just leave the team now. But that would leave Hotch in a lurch, and he's been too good to me._

He was sad beyond words at the thought of not seeing any of them again.  _If I live through it, that will be my biggest regret. And if I don't…..well, I guess it won't matter._

His mind presented and re-presented every one of the arguments his teammates had given him about why he shouldn't try it. About the probable futility of it. The danger. The fallout for all of their lives, and the lives of unknown others.

In truth, he acknowledged to himself that they were probably right. It  _was_  foolhardy, and risky. And yet, he was convicted of it. He had to try. His one small taste of a life lived in a loving relationship had convinced him he wanted it. And he was equally convinced that his one true mate had been taken from him.

It was absurd, and rash, and totally unlike anything he'd done before. But, this time, Spencer Reid knew he had to be a fool for love. In some ways, he knew, it wouldn't matter whether he succeeded. It would only matter that he'd tried.

Reid was in the midst of this extended reverie when he realized he was no longer alone in the round table room. He raised his eyes to Derek Morgan, who looked as grim as Reid had ever seen him.

"Hey, Kid….Reid…...Spencer."

Reid's eyes blew wide for a moment. Morgan had literally never called him by his first name before.

"Hi." Morgan still hadn't smiled. Remembering how he'd left the room before, Reid added, "How's Garcia?"

"She's… calmer. She'll be all right."

Reid tried to interpret Morgan's body language, but was having difficulty. So he simply readied himself for another argument….and thus, was unprepared for what came next.

"Kid, are you sure you're ready for this? Are you sure this is the right thing?"

Reid was considered in his answer.

"No. And….yes. I have no idea if I'm right or wrong about this. But I know that I have to do it. I can't explain it to you any better than this, Morgan. I just know, with every fiber of my being…..or, I guess, more to the point, with every molecule in my body….that I need to do this. That I couldn't live with myself if I didn't try."

Morgan nodded slowly, as if he'd been expecting Reid to say what he had.

"I won't pretend that I don't have my doubts, but…..I respect you, Reid. I respect what you're doing. And I respect why you need to do it. So….."

The man with the tough exterior became so choked up that he had to cut himself off. It was such an unprecedented experience between them that Reid could only squint his surprise….and then, having absorbed it, give his friend a small, sad smile.

"Thanks, Morgan. It means a lot to me to have your support, even if you don't really believe…."

Morgan cut him off. "Don't misunderstand me, Kid. I may not believe in tesseracts, but I believe in you."

Reid could only nod his appreciation. "Thanks."

He stretched out his hand to shake Morgan's, and found himself pulled into a bear hug. It lasted but a few seconds, but it conveyed a lifetime of sentiment.

"You take care of yourself, Pretty Boy. And you find your lady and live happily ever after with her."

_Even if it is in eternity._

"Thanks."

* * *

At Morgan's insistence, Reid had gone to see Garcia. She may have been settling down, as Morgan reported, but she'd still nearly squeezed the life out of her beloved boy genius.

_I may not live long enough to tesser anyway._  He hadn't been brave enough to say it aloud.

He'd barely extracted himself from their technical analyst when his phone vibrated. Anxious to hear if Dr. Sterling was ready for him, Reid opened the call without looking to see the number.

"Hello? Dr. Reid here."

"Would that be the very handsome Dr. Reid?"

Even if he hadn't immediately recognized her voice, he would have known who it was. Emily Prentiss was the only one who called him handsome. To his face, anyway.

"Emily?" It came out as a squeak.

"How's life across the pond?"

"Umm…interesting?"

"So I hear."

"Somebody called you."

"They  _all_  called me, Reid. And thank goodness they did."

"Emily…" Wary now.

"Relax, Reid. I'm not going to try to talk you out of it. I've done a little reading up. I'm sure they all think it's crazy, but from what I can tell, there have been quite a few advances."

She'd always been the one best able to keep up with him. And, in many ways, she'd always been the one who understood him best.

Her support….or lack of non-support….enthused him.

"There have! In fact….." And he went off on a classic Reid ramble about the recent breakthroughs that were making his attempt possible.

Three thousand miles away, Emily Prentiss smiled through tears. She'd missed this. She could picture the look that would always be on his face as he enlightened his colleagues about one thing or another. Excitement, energy, a sincere desire to share his sense of wonder with the others. Never smugness, nor condescension.

The others usually had more trouble following him and, in over their heads, simply rolled their eyes or walked away. But Emily thought his enthusiasm was infectious, and often shared it.

In this conversation, she realized that his enthusiasm was for something that might very well take him away from all of them, forever. And, even though he was no longer a part of her daily life, she mourned the potential loss.

But she wouldn't try to talk him out of it. Because, like Spencer Reid, Emily Prentiss was acquainted with loneliness.

When he paused for breath, she interrupted him.

"So, were you really going to do this with without calling me? Without letting me wish you luck?"  _Without saying goodbye?_

He heard what she hadn't said.

"I'm sorry. It was just last night…..I only told the team this morning. I would have called you later."

"Oh."

Not sure she believed him. But then she realized….they'd said their own painful goodbye two years ago, albeit tempered with promised phone calls and visits. It was how she'd tried to defuse the emotion of parting from each of them. And it had worked with the others. But Reid hadn't had use for the social amenities then. He'd known those phone calls and visits would taper off, if they took place at all. And there were things he'd wanted her to know. She remembered the whole conversation.

" _I didn't get to say goodbye to you before….."_ When you 'died'. _"And it was the third time in my life that had happened…someone leaving, and so many things left unsaid."_

" _Reid…." She'd still felt bad about it._

_He'd put a finger to his lips. "Shh. It's all right. This isn't about that. It's just that….even if we get to visit….even if we're on the phone all the time….it won't be the same. We both know that. So I just wanted to say, while I can….. that you have made every day coming to work…..every day of my life these past few years….. a better day. Just by being here. By putting up with my little lectures. By filling me in when I don't get a joke. By taking me seriously. You always seem to know when I've got something on my mind…and you know exactly what it is, sometimes even before I do. I just….just….thank you. Thank you, Emily… I love you."_

_She'd teared up that time, too. "I love you too, Doctor Reid." Coming from Emily, it sounded like a pet name. She'd cupped his cheek with her hand. "I will hold you in my heart."_

Reid continued. "I was going to call you, and I was going to tell you….well, you know. I've already told you."

She took a moment to compose herself. "You have. And I haven't forgotten…"

"I haven't either. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been ready for Maeve if it hadn't been for you. You know…..if I would have been mature enough, or….I don't know if it's the right word, but… if I hadn't felt validated. So…." and she could hear the smile entering his voice, "….you're kind of responsible for this."

Someone else might not have known how to take that, but Emily did. "If anything I did made you happy in any way….then I'm glad."

"So am I."

* * *

He knew there was one more painful encounter ahead of him. Possibly the most painful. But, apparently, it would have to wait. When he looked down to the bullpen, he saw only JJ's empty chair. Reid headed back to the round table room to try to get through his final stack of files.

She twirled around when she heard her enter behind him. It was obvious she'd been waiting for him.

"JJ…I was just looking for you…"

Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she wasn't actively crying.

"I'm sorry I ran out. It was just…I couldn't….you know?"

He had to swallow before he could speak. "I know. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry if this is hurting you. You know I would never…."

"I know. I just….." Her energy seemed to leave her all at once, and JJ sank into a chair. "Spence…..can we talk?"

He never could say no to her. Not that he would have wanted to, just now. Reid pulled out a chair so that he was facing her.

"Of course. Any time. You know that."

She gave him a sad smile. "Any time?"

Their 'time' was running out. "Well…."

"Sorry…..that wasn't fair. And it's not what I wanted to say."

He offered an encouraging smile in return. "Then…what?"

She'd come looking for him, intent on saying what she had to say. But now that he was sitting in front of her, she had trouble beginning. He saw her hesitation, and assured her.

"You can tell me anything, JJ. I hope you know that."

"I know. It's just…..I haven't really talked about this with anyone. Which is probably part of the problem. And I think it's gotten in the way…..and…and now you're leaving, and…."

He leaned toward her and gave what he hoped was an encouraging look. She took a deep breath and tried again.

"It's that… well, I feel like I got a little lost, for a while. And it got between us. I feel like we used to be so much closer, and then… Spence, do you realize it was Morgan who noticed there was something going on with you? Morgan, not me."

He'd felt the distance she'd mentioned too. And he'd missed her. But he'd been so preoccupied with the possibility of saving Maeve that he hadn't given it the attention he might once have done.

"It's all right, JJ. It doesn't matter."

"Yes, it does, Spence. It matters to me. It happened because I was so determined to prove myself in my new job that I shut everything else out."

"You're a great profiler, JJ. You've always had the skills. How else could you have screened our cases for so long?"

She shook her head. "It's not that. I know I can contribute to the profiling. But the jobs are very different. I didn't quite realize it until I officially became a profiler, but they're really not the same at all."

She had him curious now. "How?"

"When I was the liaison, and I had to select cases, I was analyzing risk. You know, looking at the crime and trying to figure out the likelihood of it happening again, and how quickly. It was the only way I knew how to prioritize where we should go."

"And now?"

"Now…now I have to get inside their heads, just like the rest of you. I have to analyze the person who would do such a thing, and not just the risk of them doing it again. It's what we all have to do, to find them."

He nodded, understanding the nuance. What he didn't understand was why they were talking about it.

"But….what do you mean 'it got in the way'?"

"It shook me. I don't even think I can say that it scared me. But it just….shook me."

"How? Why?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, exactly. I guess I was a little spooked about having to really understand them. Sometimes I've even found myself empathizing a little….and that really scares me. And then…"

"Then?" His softest voice.

"It's the death. The killings, really. I know I've been around it before. But, most of the time, I was with the families. Trying to give them hope, or ….when it was too late….trying to help them find a reason to keep on living themselves. It was more about life. Now….it feels like it's all about death. It's  _always_  about death."

He sat back a little. "I had nightmares."

"What?"

"Nightmares. When I first started with the BAU, I had them almost every night. For a while, they were so bad that I was afraid to go to sleep. Now…."

"It's better?" She sounded so hopeful.

He nodded. "They still come, but not as frequently. Now, sometimes my dreams are bad…and sometimes they're good." _Because they're of Maeve._  "But I still don't understand why you're telling me about this now. Did something happen?"

The look on her face said she was surprised he had to ask.

"You.  _You_  happened. This plan to travel through time. The fact that Morgan realized, and I didn't. Spence, I was so completely caught up in myself, and trying to sort out what I was feeling, that I didn't even pay attention. And you know how I get when I'm hurting..."

He smiled. They'd been through this before. "You sublimate. You pretend it doesn't matter."

Her smile was forced. "Guilty. I didn't want to show how much it was throwing me, so I just convinced myself it didn't matter. That I was tougher than the job. Tougher than the unsubs."

"Tougher than death."

Her struggle for composure told him he'd hit home. "And I just became so focused on being tough, and fitting in, even though I knew it made no sense. I didn't really have to prove myself to you guys."

"Just to yourself."

"See? There….you know me so well. And I just took it for granted. I just assumed you'd always be there. Even though I should have known you were still hurting about Maeve. I didn't take care of our friendship, and I'm sorry."

Now she'd touched a nerve in him. He  _had_  been hurting, and she  _had_  been there, at the beginning. But, then, it seemed she'd moved on. And he hadn't. He'd needed her, and she'd made herself remote. But pointing that out now wouldn't get them anywhere. Especially since things were about to change. He could afford to be conciliatory.

"There's nothing to be sorry about, JJ. If anything, I should have realized what you were going through. Didn't I just tell you that I went through it myself?"

"But you were still recovering from losing Maeve."

Even as she said it, they both realized it wasn't true. He wasn't 'recovering', and he wasn't willing to acknowledge Maeve as lost. But her words had made it clear that JJ saw the situation that way. Immediately there was an electric tension between them, and she jumped into it.

"Spence, I know you've been hurting. And I know you would love to bring her back. But….. I was there, remember? Holding on to you. I felt it too, in New Mexico. And that was just a….what did they call it?...a reverberation. I felt like I was coming apart, and it wasn't even happening to me! It can't be safe to go through an actual tesseract! And especially if there's no guarantee it will accomplish anything. Spence, please….. what if you don't come back? What if...…."

Each of the others had conceded his need to attempt his mission, no matter what they thought of the wisdom of it. No matter what they thought of the danger. But not JJ. All she could think about was the size of the hole he would leave in her life, and that of her son. If there was any possibility of talking him out of it, she intended to do so.

Her obvious distress was causing Reid anguish. Emily may have been the person who'd gotten into his head the most easily…..but JJ had, a very long time ago, gotten into his heart.

He stood and started pacing, anxious to bring her around.

"JJ…. All my life, I've been the odd one out. I grew up going to classes with kids who were six years older than me, and at least a foot taller. I was the child prodigy, the curiosity, the robot, the cyborg, the android. The computer in human skin. I know you've heard people call me that even since I've been with the BAU."

She had. And she'd let it go unchallenged. All of them had. She was ashamed of that now.

"I was recruited to the FBI because of my brain. Not my personal attributes. There was nothing about me...about who I am...that was of value. It was all about what I could do."

She could see where he was going, and tried to keep him from getting there.

"Spence….we  _all_ were. We were recruited for how we could think through a case."

He nodded, conceding it. "That's true. But….. when the case is over, and you go home…. What is it that makes Will and Henry happy to see you? What is it that you want them to care about?"

He'd gotten there anyway.

"Me. They care about me. They love me."  _And you go home to no one._

He nodded.  _Exactly._

"I had that, JJ. For just the briefest period of time in my life….I had that. I had someone who cared about who I was, and what I thought, and what I dreamed. Things that other people take for granted. I'd never had it before. And it made me feel...like I was worth something. Me. Not my brain. The person I've become. I think it even made me a better person."

He paused, to make sure she was getting it. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Satisfied, he went for it.

"Even if there's only the slightest chance that I could succeed, would you really ask me to live without it?"

Deep sadness registered in her eyes, as she had to acknowledge the answer. "No."

"So…"

"So, I get it, you don't have to say any more. I get it." Her voice broke with every word. "I won't try to stop you. I get that you need to do this."

He put out a hand to touch her shoulder. He could feel her trembling, and knew how much it had cost her to say that.

"Thank you."

He was relieved….until he remembered something very important.

"JJ...if Henry should ask about me….."

She sniffled. "I'll tell him that his godfather was a great man, who had a great love. And that he should grow up to be just like him."

Reid had to choke back tears. He loved Henry every bit as much as he loved JJ. Leaving his godson was one of his biggest regrets.

"Thank you."

JJ stood and just looked at him for a long time, studying his face, memorizing its features, but knowing that it wouldn't really be his face she would recall. It would be the man, with all of his triumphs and all of his foils. It would be his heart that JJ would remember, whenever she thought of Spencer Reid.  _Because it's inside mine. I hold your heart inside me, Spence. It's so big, I can feel myself stretching._

Looking down at her, Reid was having a different experience. Like JJ, he knew he would either see her again, or not. But Reid's 'not' wouldn't require him to hold anything in memory. He would be in a different plane altogether, one where memory served no function. So he just absorbed the moment, taking in all of her, hoping that, if the mavens of religion had gotten anything right, he would be holding a portion of her with him in eternity. And she, him.

JJ moved into him, and their arms wrapped around one another. She clung to him with all her strength, until that strength was subsumed into a sob. He felt it against his neck, and pulled her closer to him.

"It's all right. It will be all right."

She couldn't get her breath enough to speak. Her world was about to change, in one way or another. He would be gone. Or, he would be back, and devoted to another. Either way, there would be some form of loss.

She hugged him, and held him, an embrace filled with love, and regret, and what-might-have-been. "I love you. Always have."

Raised brows at that.  _Really?_ But he knew what she meant. _  
_

"I love you , too."

_And always have._


	10. Chapter 10

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 10** _

_The team trudged back into the BAU, exhausted. They would complete their preliminary reports and then head home early to rest. Tomorrow would afford them a full day of work to get the details down._

" _I can't remember the last time I was this tired," said JJ. "Oh, wait, that's not true. It was when Henry had colic for the first three months of his life. You should have seen me then. I was a virtual zombie."_

" _Did you know that both the CDC and the Pentagon have developed strategies to combat a zombie apocalypse?" offered their walking Wikipedia._

_Morgan frowned his disbelief. "Right."_

" _No, really. All right, maybe they're not actually preparing for zombies, but they have plans in place for if we should face some type of internal threat. But they're filed under 'zombie apocalypse'."_

_JJ laughed at her friends. "Well, Morgan, I can tell you that zombies do exist, because I was one. For three months. And, Spence…you get entirely too excited about the strangest things."_

" _Well, I can't exactly relate to the feeling of being a zombie. Guess we lucked out in that regard."_

" _You sure did, and my little goddaughter is the best little baby in the whole world. But don't tell Henry I said that, okay?"_

_He smiled. "He'd be jealous? Not my little man. Although Maeve is a bit jealous of how much Nora loves her godmother."_

" _She is not! Why don't you guys all come over for brunch on Sunday? Will's dying to do some breakfast sausage on his new grill….says it will give it that special flavor. And Henry can't wait to introduce Nora to chocolate chip pancakes."_

_He smiled. "I'll check with Maeve. She's got a paper she's trying to finish for a deadline. If she's made enough progress, we'd love…."_

" _Spence!"_

_He followed JJ's gaze to the doors behind him. The glass was supposed to be impenetrable. They shouldn't have to worry anything coming through. Except a person. Wearing an FBI badge…and the face of John Curtis._

_Curtis had already scanned the room and found Alex Blake in the cubicle next to Reid's. He raised his gun and took aim. Reid had time to do nothing except launch himself at Alex, hoping to take both of them down and out of range of the Replicator._

_Time slowed, and Reid found himself in mid-air, suspended, able to hear the whine of the bullet as it traveled toward them. Time had slowed so much that the whine fell in pitch until it sounded like a buzzzzz…_

He startled to the sound of his alarm. Reid's eyes shot open immediately, verifying that he was not in immediate danger. Not  _immediate_  danger. He was home, alone, in his apartment, as he had been every time he'd had some version of this dream over the past several weeks. Each time it began with promise, and seemed an omen of success in his proposed endeavor. And, each time, it ended, unfinished, with the threat of imminent danger. Or, more specifically, his imminent demise.

_I can't wait for this to be over. This waiting is as bad as the actual vibrations._

It wasn't just the dreams that were getting to him. Every morning he walked into the BAU and noticed all of the others noticing  _him_ …..and then exhaling sighs of relief. The tension was only eased when they were away on a case, and then only because he'd promised Hotch that he wouldn't leave them in the middle of an active investigation. To the others, it always seemed as though the emergence of an active serial killer was keeping their colleague alive. In the most paradoxical way, the death of a victim was directly associated with the life of one of their friends, and vice versa.

Reid began to rethink his decision to stick with the team until Los Alamos was ready to pull the trigger on sending him into the past.

_Maybe it would be better for everyone if I was just gone. They could move on, and I would be the only one stuck in this limbo. Which feels a whole lot more like purgatory._

Whether or not he would have actively left the team became a moot point when Reid's phone vibrated. The caller ID was protected. Most of the time that meant the call was coming from Los Alamos. Reid anxiously pressed the call open.

* * *

"JJ, has he said anything to you?"

It had been weeks since the 'goodbye', and Reid was still among them. Morgan couldn't help but wonder if his 'little brother' had taken all of their unsolicited advice to heart, and changed his mind.

He'd also noticed a thawing of the unintended cooling off in the relationship between his two colleagues. He recognized it as being good for both of them, but wondered if Reid was now confiding only in JJ.

Not so. She shook her head. "He hasn't said a thing. And, to tell you the truth, I've been kind of afraid to ask."

As much as it had cost her, she'd said she wouldn't fight him on it, and she couldn't very well retract that promise now.

Morgan agreed with her. "I know what you mean. If we ask, and they're just not ready, it seems like we weren't really supporting him in the first place."

"And if we ask and we find out that there's some kind of snag….that maybe he won't be able to go….really, Derek, I don't think I'm good enough at hiding my feelings. He'd know in a second how happy I was."

Dave Rossi demonstrated just how good a profiler he was when he passed by, caught only the final few words from JJ, and knew exactly what they were discussing.

"Is there a chance he won't be going? Has he heard something?"

JJ shrugged. "He hasn't said a thing. And we're afraid to ask him."

Rossi smiled. "What, you don't want him to think you're anxious for him to leave?"

Morgan snorted. "Yeah, right. We're worried he'll think we want to be rid of him."

JJ acknowledged the nonsense of it. "But, seriously, Rossi…do you think we should ask? I know how bad he feels about leaving us, and, God knows, I don't want to hurry him along. But what if something's gone wrong? What if it's postponed indefinitely? He'd be hurting about that, wouldn't he? And he couldn't talk about it."

Morgan agreed. "JJ's right. After everything…..well, if it's postponed….or maybe cancelled altogether…I think he'd have a hard time telling us."

JJ didn't completely agree.

"I think if it was cancelled….if he couldn't go at all….I think he'd tell us. So we'd know that it was over. All it takes is one look at his face to know that he feels terrible putting the team through this long goodbye. He'd want us to know…..wouldn't he?"

In the intervening weeks, JJ had traversed the gap in her relationship with her best friend. Having confided, at last, in Reid, she was no longer trying to convince herself that she was untouched by their cases. She'd vented to Spence more than once during their long plane rides back to Quantico. And she'd seen the conflicting emotions in him. The longing….and the regret. She'd come to realize that he regretted putting the whole team through this extended period of waiting. And he regretted knowing that JJ would, one day, have to vent herself to someone else.

Rossi was the acknowledged voice of experience in the BAU. Now, both JJ and Morgan anxiously awaited his judgment on the situation. He took so long considering that Morgan asked the question again.

"Do you think he'd tell us if it wasn't going to happen? Or do you think we should ask him?"

Rossi stood, looking through the window and into the distance. Finally, he seemed to reach a conclusion.

"Hard to say."

* * *

It went on like that for several more weeks, with each other member of the team seeming to be hoping that another member would broach the subject with Reid. Most of them hoped Hotch would assume the responsibility. But his role as unit chief didn't give him jurisdiction over what his agents did on their own time, of their own accord. Considering they were a cadre of people who spent their lives analyzing and addressing human behavior, the team'sreluctance to be direct with Reid confounded even them.

After the long Memorial Day weekend and Reid's begging off attending a barbecue at the LaMontagne household…..not to mention failing, for the first time, to help with one of Rossi's favorite veteran's groups…..JJ had reached her saturation point.

_I know it's not a surprise that he's keeping to himself. After all, this has become so awkward, ever since he made his final goodbyes to all of us. But it's not healthy. I can't let this go on and on and on. Henry thinks Spence is mad at him. And poor Spence is just left there, on his own, in his own private limbo. I have to talk to him. I'll figure out a way…._

She became determined to pull him aside at her very next opportunity, but struggled with exactly what to say.

_Hey, Spence, aren't you ever going to take that trip back into time? Or Hey, Spence….I notice you're still around….what gives?_

When the moment actually presented itself, JJ was no more prepared….but much less facetious.

They'd been called out immediately after the long weekend, to a very small town on the outskirts of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Three bodies had been found in a nearby area of marshes, each female, one a known prostitute. The identities of the other two had proven hard to come by, until Alex noted a similarity in their tattoos.

"Not the same subject matter, obviously. But there's a turn of the hand that I see in how this rose was formed….see, it's almost exactly like that vine…..do you see?" she'd asked, as they all studied projections provided by Garcia.

David Rossi was impressed. "This must be the linguist's version of artistic deconstruction…..or something like that."

The others had chuckled at his obvious struggle with the comparison. But they'd also recognized that he was right. The tattoos had clearly been created by the same artist. Which would make their victims easier to identify.

From there, things had moved quickly, as Reid traced the symbolism of their epidermal artworks, and found the common thread. Their reluctant pimp had caved to Rossi's predictions of future losses of 'inventory', should he not assist in identifying their common customer. And, with a combination of good detective work, profiling, and knowledge of the arcane, they'd found and apprehended their unsub.

They arrived back to the BAU in mid-afternoon, under direction from Hotch to complete their preliminaries and then call it a day. None had been able to get much sleep the night before.

_He's at it again,_  noted JJ. For a while, after he'd confessed his plans, Reid had resumed the pattern of completing his work back at his desk In the bullpen. But now he had disappeared again. JJ had seen him climb the stairs and head in the general direction of the round table room. As she finished her final preliminary report, she pushed the files away and decided to seek out her best friend.

_You can do it_ , she tried to psych herself _. He won't mind. He'll know you're only worried about him, and trying to look out for his best interests._

As she neared the room, she could see the pile of paperwork in front of him, ignored, as Reid leaned his head on his hand and looked out the window…..clearly engaged in no task other than thinking.

Not wanting to intrude, even on Reid's own private thoughts, JJ knocked on the door jamb before entering the room. It took a second, louder round of knocking to pull his attention back from the distance into which he'd been staring.

"Huh? Oh, hi, JJ."

"Hi yourself. Boy, you were pretty far away. Sure you're back?"

He smiled, that smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Do you need me for something?"

JJ tilted her head, studying him as she approached the table.

"No…...yes."

"No, yes?" He smiled at her, and she couldn't help but return it.

"No, there's nothing urgent. Not about the case, anyway. But…..yes…..I did want to talk to you."

There was a change in his posture that indicated he was on alert.

"Is everything okay? Did something happen? Are you okay?"

Now that she'd committed to the conversation, JJ wasn't quite certain how to get it to proceed. She hesitated, prompting a solicitous response from Reid.

"It's just me, JJ. You can tell me anything. I thought you knew that."

She was about to respond with  _'I thought you did, too'_ , when it struck her.

There was something….something in the way he held himself, something in the timbre of his voice…...and, most tellingly, something in his eyes. And suddenly she knew. Immediately, she knew.

JJ threw all effort at subtlety and nuance out the window. This wasn't subject matter for that. She could only get right to the point.

Even before she asked the question, she was certain she knew the answer. But she was totally unable to disentangle the conflicting emotions she was sure his answer would bring.

"Oh, my God, Spence…..has it already happened? Have you already been there?"


	11. Chapter 11

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 11** _

"Spence?"

He couldn't meet her eyes, and that scared her. JJ walked closer to Reid, and laid a hand on his shoulder, effectively turning him in his seat. Then she squatted in front of him, to bring her face level with his.

"Spence…please, tell me. Has it already happened? Did you….."

When he turned his face to look directly at hers, she knew.

"You did, didn't you? When? How?"

And then she realized the answers to those questions weren't important. The only important thing was the outcome. As afraid as she was to ask, JJ had to.

"What happened? Did you save her? Spence….. is Maeve alive?"

Fresh grief swelled in his eyes. He obviously didn't need to answer, but he struggled to do so anyway.

"She saved me."

JJ fell back on her heels. He'd whispered the words, but they were still powerful enough to push her over.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Reid returned his gaze to the window, and JJ simply sat and watched him, trying to absorb what he'd said. Trying to absorb  _all_  of it. That he'd been to the past, and returned. That they hadn't lost him. That, apparently, he'd lost Maeve….again. The elation of knowing he wouldn't be gone from her life battled with her sharing in his obvious grief. And a rising guilt at not noticing it earlier. Not even knowing how much earlier it had happened.

JJ reached out a hand and touched Spence's knee, prompting him to look at her again.

"If you want to tell me, I'm here to listen."

The breath he heaved could have belonged to a centenarian.

"It's a pretty short story. And you already know pretty much how it ends."

She'd been a stalwart for him when Maeve had died….the first time. She'd been present for the horrifying event, and borne witness to the grief that followed. JJ knew that the story had never really ended for Reid. He'd relived some version of it, in his thoughts and in his dreams, ever since. And now, it seemed, he'd lived it in actuality.

_Will it ever be over for you, Spence?_

She took one of his hands in hers. "How are you? Are you okay? I mean, I know you're not okay, but…are you?"

_Deep inside…..are you still there? Are you there, to come back to us?_

He squeezed the hand she held. "Logically, I know it's not really different. She was missing from my life before and she's still missing from it. So nothing has changed….right?"

She tilted her head in a look that said she knew better. Logic had nothing to do with what he was going through. She put voice to it.

"But you had hope, for a little while. And now…."

A resigned look settled on his face. "Now, I know a little better about how things work. Or don't, I guess."

JJ took his face into her hands. "I'm so sorry, Spence. I know how much you wanted it. And, as much as it was breaking my heart to lose you…..I was rooting for you. I was rooting for you and Maeve to be together."

She'd even been hoping to get to know the mystery woman herself _. Anyone who can capture my Spence like that…has to be pretty impressive._

"I know you were. And I'm sorry for what I put you through. I just….I needed….."

For the first time in their current conversation, he began to lose control of his voice.

"Was it selfish of me, JJ? To want her back? I kept telling myself that I owed it to her to try, but…..really, it was for me. And she….she….."

He couldn't finish the sentence, and he lost his battle to restrain his tears. JJ's eyes watered in sympathy.

Her hands felt the tension in his face as she used her thumbs to wipe his cheeks dry.

"Spence….when you love someone, there's no doing something for the sake of one of you or the other. What hurts one of you, hurts both. And what's good for one of you is good for both. So, no…..you weren't selfish."

She waited a beat to make sure it was sinking in, then continued.

"It's me who's selfish. Because I'm so thankful that it's over and you're still here. You're still a part of my life. And I thank God for that."

He made a weak attempt at a smile.

"At least you won't have to tell Henry anything about me."

Remembering what she'd said before.  _I'll tell him that his godfather was a great man, who had a great love. And that he should grow up to be just like him._

"I'm telling him anyway."

She pulled his face forward and kissed his forehead. "I would be honored if my son turned out to be every bit the man that his godfather is."

She started to rise, and Reid stood to help her up.

"Spence….the others…."

He nodded. "I know. I've known I need to tell everyone, but I couldn't…..I just wasn't ready, I guess."

"And now?"

He closed his eyes in resignation, heaved a great sigh, and started toward the door.

"I'm still not ready. But I guess it's time. But I need to tell Hotch first."

* * *

He wanted to go in alone, so JJ left him at the doorway.

The unit chief had noticed two of his team approaching through the sidelight window, and his antennae had gone up at the sight of the one agent being escorted by the other. He suspected he knew what Reid had come to tell him…..that it was time…..until he read the expression on the young man's face. What he saw there caused Hotch to flash back to an early morning meeting, a little over a year ago, when he'd seen that same expression on that same face.

"Reid, what is it?" The senior profiler waved the younger to a seat as he prepared himself to hear that the entire endeavor had been cancelled.

"I need to tell you something."

Hotch could have sworn that other conversation had started the same way. His silence signaled Reid to continue.

"Five days ago, I received word from Dr. Sterling that they were ready for me. It was at the beginning of the long weekend. I know I promised to tell you….but you were away, and I didn't want to ruin things. So I asked Dr. Sterling to promise to call you on Monday night, before the team started back to work."

The call wasn't only about the job. The two men had worked it out that, should Reid not return from his quest, Hotch would be empowered to dispose of all of his things. It wasn't exactly an 'estate' because they wouldn't know whether he was dead or alive. But he certainly wouldn't be paying rent.

Hotch shook his head. "I didn't receive any calls."

Reid was somber. "That's because there wasn't a need to call you. Not by Monday night."

Hotch's brows came together in concentration. "What are you saying, Reid?"

The young man closed his eyes and plowed through it. "I'm saying that I was tessered and returned in time to make it back to work yesterday morning."

"You..." Hotch was furrowed into a virtual unibrow. "You underwent the process? They tessered you back?"

Reid nodded.

Things started coming together in a way that Hotch sincerely regretted. Because he now understood why it felt like he was reliving that day from last year.

"Maeve?" Fearing he aleady knew the answer.

Remaining silent, Reid simply shook his head.

The senior profiler had some difficulty maintaining his famed composure. After a moment, he asked, " Do the others know?"

"JJ knows that it happened. The others….not yet."

Hotch considered a moment and then asked, "Are you up to it?"

As had JJ, he knew every member of the team had become too invested in their youngest member and his quest to let it go easily. They'd all supported him, and they all needed to know.

Reid realized it as well.

"I guess. Might as well get it over with. And I'd rather just tell it the one time."

"All right. I'll have Garcia gather them in the round table room."

* * *

_**A.N. I've no doubt some of you are disappointed at this turn of events. But, trust me, I am not a fantasy writer.  
** _


	12. Chapter 12

_**Inconsequential** _

_**Chapter 12** _

Each of them entered the conference room to see a downcast Reid, already seated, and JJ next to him. Like Hotch, they all expected to hear that the project had been cancelled, and each tried to hide a private jubilation at the notion.

But then each of them, save Garcia, felt an involuntary activation of their profiling skills. The look on Reid's face wasn't one of disappointment. It was the look of self-recrimination, the look of failure…..the look of grief. And so, even before Hotch got the meeting started, even though the very concept was still astounding to them…..they came to know what they would be told.

Morgan leapt right over protocol.

"It's over, isn't it, Kid?"

Murmured words of condolence and gratitude for having him back came from Blake and Rossi. Only Penelope Garcia remained confused. This was something none of her computers knew how to decipher.

"What? What happened? Is he all right?" Somehow feeling that she should ask the others, and not Reid.

Hotch made the announcement. "The test has already been conducted. And, thankfully, Reid is back with the team."

Garcia was flustered. "What? When? How?" She looked around the table at the others. "Did everyone know this but me?" Without waiting for a response, she turned her attention to Reid. "My sweet baby genius….are you all right? Did you save her? Where's Mae…"

And then it hit her. What no one had actually said, but all of them knew. She may not have been a profiler, but she loved her friends. She'd known immediately upon entering the room that something was wrong with Reid. But, until this moment, she'd not processed what it was.

The youngest profiler had kept his eyes on the tabletop, with an occasional rapid glance at one or another of his colleagues. Now his gaze made a deliberate circle around the table before settling again on the space in front of him. When he spoke, his voice was dry, and so soft that the others had to lean forward to hear him.

"You've all been so good to me. Indulging me in this. Supporting me, even when I know you didn't really think it could work. Even when you couldn't bring yourselves to believe in tesseracts."

The guilty parties wore small, rueful smiles at belng called out.

"So I owe it to you to explain. But…after this….please…..can we not talk about it again?"

No one was foolish enough to voice such a promise, so Reid went on.

"Late last week, I received word from Dr. Sterling. They were ready. We were all headed out on the long weekend anyway, so I didn't tell Hotch. I just made my way to New Mexico and met the project team at Los Alamos. After that, things moved pretty swiftly."

Morgan interrupted him. "Pretty Boy, where….I mean 'when'….did you finally decide to go…..or arrive?" Even knowing how to talk about time travel was difficult.

Reid nodded slightly, acknowledging the dilemma. He'd been back and forth on the wisdom of arriving at various points along the line of his relationship with Maeve, or even in the life of Diane.

"In the end, there wasn't a choice. It wasn't what I'd wanted. In fact, it was specifically what I wanted to avoid…."

That gave it away. The loft.

"Why, Spence?" JJ knew how much he'd feared having to relive that piece, above all others.

"Because, even though they'd figured out how to target a specific time, they said they wouldn't be able to bring me back if I was there for more than a few hours. There's an amplitude signal that happens when you tesser, but it fades out over time. Ironically. And they need to capture that amplitude to bring something…or someone….back." His voice gained some strength as he wandered into the more comfortable area of science.

"But you could have gone back to an earlier time, couldn't you?" asked Blake. "You could have spent your few hours making an intervention earlier."

Reid conceded it. "But I couldn't trust that it would work. I would have had to return to the present just  _hoping_  the present was different. But I couldn't take that chance. I couldn't risk that it wouldn't be. I had to intervene at the time that it actually happened, if I wanted to be sure."

Rossi was still studying his younger colleague, and seeing more than they were being told.

"You argued against it, didn't you? You wanted them to let you stay longer, even if it meant…"

"Yes. Even if it meant I couldn't come back. But Dr. Sterling forbade it. He said it would put the entire project in jeopardy if they lost a human test subject. They'd already had trouble over their own project scientists not returning."

Garcia's eyes were huge at the horror of her friend having to relive the most tragic moment of his life. She was the only one of the team who hadn't been present in the loft that fateful evening, the only one not witness to Reid's overpowering grief. But she'd seen the residua of it in him for a very long time afterwards. That he should have had to relive it was unthinkable.

"So you  _had_  to go back to that godforsaken place?" she whispered.

Reid nodded again. "It was the only way."

He became silent for so long that JJ reached over and touched his arm.

"Spence…..you don't have to…"

The others murmured their assent. They didn't want to relive the trauma either.

He cleared his throat. "It's all right. I want you to know. Because….it was different, this time."

He looked around at them again, as if asking permission to continue. When no one objected, he resumed his story.

"This time, I got to the loft earlier. Maybe an hour or more earlier. It took me a few minutes to come back to myself."

He turned to look at JJ. "The vibrations for actually moving physically through time are….well, they're a lot more intense."

She shuddered at the idea. "I felt like we were coming apart with those reverberations. I can't imagine what you must have felt this time."

"Pretty much that. Like I was coming apart. Because, when you think about it, that's what's happening. You come apart, and then you get reassembled."

At that, Hotch made a mental note to send Reid for a thorough examination as soon as possible.

Reid went on. "So, after I got oriented, I realized I was in the loft. But neither Diane nor Maeve were there. Only Bobby. And he was already dead."

"Could that have been when she abducted Maeve?" asked Alex.

Rossi remembered it better. "It couldn't have been. Maeve had aleady been taken before we went to Bobby and Diane's apartment. I don't think he had a clue what Diane was up to. She'd been stalking the two of them for months, sending pictures….he even showed them to us."

Reid confirmed what Rossi said. "She already had Maeve. I'd started looking around the loft to see if there might be a way for me to surprise her and disarm her, when I found the compartment that held the ladder to the roof. I thought maybe I could conceal myself there, but when I went inside, I could hear voices coming from above. One of them was Maeve's. After so many months of phone calls, I would have known her voice anywhere."

"They were on the roof?" Morgan wanted clarity.

Reid nodded. "I went up the ladder a bit, and I could hear. From what they were saying, I could tell that Diane had been taunting Maeve, trying to get her to jump off…..to make it look like suicide. And that Maeve had refused her. She kept saying she wouldn't let the world think she was despondent, because she wasn't. She said her life was worth living, unlike Diane's."

They could hear it in his voice, and see it in his face. He was proud of the woman he'd loved, and the spirit she'd shown in her final moments. JJ realized something more.

"She felt that way because of you, Spence. You told us yourself how she'd given up on everything when she was being stalked. But, obviously, something had changed."

Garcia jumped on it as well. "That's right, Boy Wonder. You made her care about her life again."

Reid wouldn't take credit. "I don't know. All I know is that I was so proud of her for not acting like a victim."

He shifted so that he was sitting up straighter in his chair, as though encouraged by the fortitude of the woman he loved.

"I couldn't see them. And I didn't know where, exactly, they were standing. I was afraid Diane might be able to push Maeve. And I was sure she had the gun. For a minute, I was afraid Maeve had made Diane so angry that she would shoot her. But then I heard Diane say she had a new plan, and I heard the voices moving closer to where I was. So I hurried down the ladder and did my best to stay in the shadows. Diane came down behind Maeve and forced her into a chair and tied her. She seemed pretty agitated, because she kept walking back and forth from Maeve to the window."

Rossi remembered. "It must have been after you made your deal with Diane." The one where he'd used the video feed to offer himself in a trade for Maeve.

Morgan spoke up, voicing something all of them had been wondering. "What  _about_  that? Were there two of you there? Did you see yourself?"

Reid could only shrug. "I don't know. I mean, I never saw myself. I think I arrived at the loft probably just after I'd…..the 'other' me, I mean…..right after I'd tried to make the trade. It sounded like that's what they were talking about when they came down from the roof."

"So, does that mean you never went back to the BAU? Does that mean we never came with you to the loft?" JJ was as confused as Morgan.

"Like I said, I don't know. Because I wasn't there long enough to find out."

The calm voice of Alex Blake sounded next. "Maybe you should just tell us, Spencer. We can ask our questions later." Looking around the table to seek agreement.

Reid sent her a grateful smile. All he wanted to do now was to get this over with.

"I don't know whether the other me was still headed to the loft or not, but Diane thought I was. I think she must have gone downstairs to put that package with the blindfold outside. So I took the chance and showed myself to Maeve. She was shocked when I came out into the light, but I had my finger to my lips, and she knew enough not to cry out. But," he looked up ever so briefly at the others, "she did whisper something."

Garcia was leaning so far forward that she started to fall out of her seat, saved only by the strong arm of Derek Morgan.

"Careful, Baby Girl."

"I know. It's just…..what did she say?"

"Spencer."

JJ's brows were up. "She knew you?"

He nodded, the amazement of the moment returned to his face. "She knew me. I don't know how, but…"

Penelope was completely caught up in the romance of the story. "Because you were her knight in shining armor. And she loved you."

Her remark brought a change to Reid's expression that was so complex it was virtually unreadable...an odd mixture of gratitude and regret and longing and loss. In another moment, he'd rearranged his features, and continued.

"We didn't have much time. I needed to free her ties before Diane came back. Thank God I had Morgan's utility knife." He flashed a 'thank you' to the good friend who'd given it as a Christmas gift one year. "I was able to get her free, and we started for the door…..and then it opened. Diane was back."

None of them realized it, but they were all holding their breaths, anxious all over again for the life of their young colleague and the woman he loved.

"I pulled Maeve back into the shadow, and we crouched behind a cabinet. Diane saw the empty chair as soon as she came into the room. She started screaming at Maeve, not even realizing we were still there. Then she started for the stairway to the roof again, and started climbing. I pulled Maeve out and we started running for the door. But she caught her foot on the leg of the chair. She fell, and the chair tipped over. Diane heard the noise and came back down the ladder. And then…"

He stared out the window of the conference room, seeing another image entirely. What it cost him to visit the scene again was written clearly across his face. JJ rubbed his shoulder, needing to show her comfort and support.

"And then….Diane aimed her gun at both of us. I pushed Maeve behind me, because it was pretty clear Diane didn't want me. She wanted Maeve. She kept screaming that I needed to get out of the way and let her have Maeve. She wanted justice for all the imaginary wrongs she was convinced Maeve had committed against her."

Garcia ignored Blake's admonition to hold her questions. "Why didn't you just shoot her? Didn't you have your gun?"

Reid looked to Morgan, who answered for him. "It's more complicated when you fly commercial, Baby Girl. It wasn't official duty…."

"And I was in too much of a hurry to check luggage. I could only carry the knife."

Penelope was suddenly mad at the FBI, the FAA, DHS and any other acronymed agency. For want of the BAU jet, it seemed, Maeve had been lost. Again.

Reid saw her outrage on his behalf and sent her a grateful look before continuing.

"We wouldn't do what she wanted, of course. We wouldn't let her have Maeve. But then Diane changed her tack. She decided she wanted me. She would kill me so Maeve would be deprived. I thought that, if I let her try, it would give Maeve time to get free. So I shoved Maeve through the door and started to close it behind her. Diane became enraged that Maeve wouldn't see her kill me, and she came running at me, and firing. I was just turning back from the door, and she was almost on me. All I could do was to fight her for the gun. Then the door pushed back open, and it knocked me off balance. It was Maeve. She wouldn't stay away. I begged her to leave, I told her I couldn't watch the woman I loved be killed in front of me….but she wouldn't go. By then, Diane was completely focused on me, and killing me. And I was on the ground, scrambling to get up. She must have seen Diane ready to fire, because all I know is that Maeve launched herself into the space between me and Diane. And, when she fell to the ground, she was bleeding from her chest."

"Oh, my God," wailed Penelope, as all of the others sat, silent, eyes closed.

"There were sirens outside right after that. I was sitting, holding Maeve, holding the wound, telling her I loved her, begging her to hold on. But I could see the light leaving her eyes. So I just kept telling her, over and over and over. "I love you. Don't be afraid."

Sniffling could be heard around the table as each of them were moved at the image of their friend guiding his love into eternity.

"Diane seemed shocked, at first, at what had happened. But then she heard the sirens, too. She'd stopped shooting at me, and was back to threatening me with the gun. I guess she wanted to use me as a hostage. But I couldn't move. I  _wouldn't_  move. I wouldn't leave Maeve alone. I told Diane I didn't care. I told her to go ahead and kill me. "Better yet, I said, "give me the gun and I'll kill myself."

A sharp intake of breath from JJ at that. She worried all over again, as she had a year ago, if depression would claim him.

"And then, I looked down again and….it seemed like I'd only been turned away for a few seconds…or maybe it was a thousand years…..but she was gone. Maeve was gone. I was so angry…I've never actually wanted to kill someone before. But, in that moment, I did. I laid Maeve on the floor, and I started to stand. But before I could do anything else... I started to vibrate…"

There was complete silence for a very long minute as each of them tried to comprehend everything he'd told them. The entire idea of traveling back in time was mind-boggling in and of itself. But to hear someone they cared about having gone through it, and having experienced the same unthinkable loss…dumbfounded all of them.

First to recover was Garcia, who'd never met a silence she wasn't compelled to break.

"So….she died? You went all the way back there, and she died anyway?"

Morgan put a silencing hand on her arm as he changed the subject.

"Kid….you told her. You told her, and she heard you. That has to be worth something."

Reid had wanted so desperately to be happy about that. To be content with it. But he wasn't.

"What good did it do? It didn't save her.  _I_  didn't save her."

"But Morgan's right, Spence. It was different, this time. You held her, and you told her. And she heard you." JJ was desperate to find an upside to al of this.

"But she's still dead. I may as well not have gone back at all. I didn't make a difference. What good is my life, if it didn't make a difference in hers?"

"Spence…."

"I just don't understand the point." It was as though he'd forgotten the rest of them were there. He was speaking largely to himself now. "I don't get why I'm here. Why I'm alive. If my life doesn't make a difference…."

The others exchanged concerned glances at one another, and then most eyes settled on Hotch, expecting him to step in. But his eyes were directed elsewhere. He'd noticed a change in another one of his agents.

Alex Blake had been largely quiet throughout the meeting. Now, feeling her unit chief's eyes on her, and wanting to do what she could for Reid, she cleared her throat and spoke up.

"I wasn't going to say anything just yet, but….well, this seems like a good time. When you first told us about your intent to go back in time, Spencer…it all just seemed so …..Quixotic, I guess. Like you were tilting at windmills. But it was also so moving. Romantic. Noble. You were so focused on your relationship with Maeve, and you were willing to give up everything for it…and it made me think. It made me examine my own life…..and my own relationship. I started to think, would I do the same for love? Would I do it for James? And I realized…..I  _wanted_  to be that person, but I never have been. But….," and she looked around at all of them, settling her gaze on her unit chief, "….I'm going to be that person now. Hotch, I'm so sorry to tell you this way. But I've decided to resign from the BAU. I don't want to live apart from my husband any more. I want to put our relationship first."

All of them were caught off guard by this unexpected announcement. But Hotch recovered quickly. He'd had cause to examine his own relationships from time to time. Part of him wished he'd had the mindset to do what Blake was doing now.

"We'll miss you, Alex."  _But you're doing the right thing._

The others offered similar sentiments. And then David Rossi called for their attention.

"I guess this is as good a time as any, considering."

Hotch gave him a look that said,  _Don't tell me you're leaving too!_

Proving that he didn't need to hear the words, Rossi answered his old friend anyway.

"Don't worry. You won't be getting rid of me any time soon. No, I was just going to say that Spencer's quest had an effect on me as well. Not a romantic one…" He put up his hand at the smiles around the table. "I'm not looking for wife number four any time soon."

He let them get the chuckles out of their systems. "I'm talking about Erin's children. We were getting to know one another. She'd wanted them to give their blessing…..but I'm afraid I let those relationships lapse after we lost her. I'm not particularly proud of that, because I should have put the kids first. But I'm a selfish bastard, and I was too focused on my own loss."

He was settled back in his chair, no apparent embarrassment at what he was telling them. He'd obviously spent time on it, and come to terms. "Spencer…..you set an example for this old man. You showed me that it's possible to look past the man in the mirror. And that, looking past, you get to see your future. I've been visiting with the kids at least once a week, at their uncle's home. They're great people, just like their mother. I'm glad they're in my life."

Morgan looked at his 'little brother'. "You hear that, Pretty Boy? You did that….you and Maeve both."

Reid could only manage a half smile. He was both physically and emotionally spent, and it was beginning to show. Hotch decided it was time to bring the conversation to an end.

"I've put us on stand down for the rest of the day. You'll have the time to catch up on paperwork or..." he cast his eyes in Reid's direction, "….you can choose to take personal time. God knows we've all got a lot of it in the bank."

The others all patted Reid's back or uttered words of support as they filed out of the room. Only Morgan and JJ lingered behind with their good friend. Morgan looked to his blond colleague and asked, "JJ….could you give us a few minutes?"

"Oh. Sure." Turning to Reid, she said, "Don't leave without me." She knew enough to pull the door shut behind her as she left.

Morgan pulled out the chair next to Reid's and sat, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

"There's more to this, isn't there?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean…..what are the odds that you travel back in time, and almost the exact same thing happens at almost the exact same time?" Morgan's little internal observer noticed that he was now taking the possibility of time travel for granted.

"What are you asking?"

"I'm asking…..I don't know….I guess I'm asking….is it fate? Are things going to happen when they happen, no matter what we do?"

It seemed to Morgan that the inability to impact the past had definite implications for the ability to impact the present….and the future.

Reid had already been there, and he was still working on it.

"I don't know. I talked with Dr. Sterling about it. He's a bit of a philosopher as well as a physicist. Oddly enough, it seems like the two go together."

"What did he think?"

"He's not sure. Do you remember me telling you how to think about time as a line?"

Morgan nodded.

"Do you remember how we might think about eternity? As though we're looking at that line from a distance, so we can see the whole of it at once?"

Morgan nodded again. The visual had made a lot of sense to him at the time.

"Well, Dr. Sterling thinks…..no, I guess it's more correct to say he  _wonders_ ….if each of us has a defined space on that line. So that, even if tessering can change the facts of that life, it doesn't change the lifespan."

Morgan felt anger rising within. Had Los Alamos already known this? Had Reid been sent on a fool's errand?

"Did Dr. Sterling tell you this before he tessered you?"

Reid heard the tone of his good friend's voice, and was grateful for the sentiment it conveyed. But it wasn't warranted.

"No….no, Morgan. He thought the same way I did, before. That there might be a chance to change everything. It was only afterwards, when I'd recovered enough, and we were debriefing."

Morgan heard it. "Recovered? What do you mean, 'recovered'?"

Reid had obviously chosen not to share this part with the others. "It's…the extraction process, I mean….it's a bit more difficult than the induction. The vibrations are more…vigorous. I wasn't conscious until the next day."

"You weren't...…Pretty Boy, did they examine you? Was there any.."

"170. But please don't tell Hotch….and, Morgan, please don't tell JJ. She'll just worry."

" _I'm_  worried, Reid. And don't you think Hotch will insist on your being tested? After the last time…"

"I know. I'm just hoping I can put it off enough to do some recovery on my own, so maybe I'll get a few points back by then."

Morgan tried to smile. "Don't worry, Kid. I'll cover for you until you're back up to 187."

That brought a much welcomed grin from his friend. "I'll count on it."

Morgan started to rise. "Speaking of JJ…I'd better let her have you, or Mama Bear will be coming after us." He pulled Reid up with him, and drew him into a quick man-hug.

"For the record, Kid…..I couldn't look up to you more. If I'm ever blessed enough to love a lady like you love Maeve….I hope I'll have the courage to show it the way you have. And you heard Rossi and Blake…the next time you think your life doesn't matter, just think about how much you've impacted them. And me. And all of us. Maybe you couldn't save your lady. Maybe it was destiny. Maybe you couldn't change the past. But the fact that you tried…..it changed all of us. It changed the present. And that will change the future."

As much as he realized Morgan's affection, Reid was usually on the teasing end of the older profiler's words. He was profoundly touched at what he'd just heard.

It was a moment before he could speak. "Thanks. Thanks, Morgan."

The older man had made it to the door when he turned and asked another question.

"Hey, Reid. That place outside the line of time. Eternity. Do you think that's where we come from? And where we go to?"

The young still-genius had pondered almost nothing else since Maeve's death over a year ago. Her _original_  death. If she was there, in eternity, outside the line…. then she still 'was'. And they could meet again.

"I hope so, Morgan. I hope so."

* * *

It was under a minute before JJ made her appearance in the round table room. She'd had her eyes glued to the door the entire time.

"I saw Morgan leave, and I….."

"And you didn't want me to be alone."

Guilty. "No, I guess I didn't. Spence, are you okay? I mean…are….."

"Am I a danger to myself?" It sounded so clinical.

"No! Yes…I don't…Spence…"

Her distress prompted him to take her off the hook. "I'm sad, JJ. But I'm not suicidal. I'm not going to do anything."

The lowering of her shoulders told him he'd relieved her anxiety.

"I'm sorry, Spence. I was just worried. After everything last year, and then to have to go through it again…."

She was in front of him now, and he rubbed her arm in thanks for her concern.

"Grief comes and goes anyway, I've found. It's true that this brought it back. But I know that it will ease, now. I didn't know that, last year."

When he'd hidden away from them for weeks, and rebutted their consolation.

She smiled encouragement at him. "I came to ask you if you wanted to come home with me. Since Hotch said we could take the time."

He started to refuse. "I'm exhausted, JJ. Maybe I should just go home and…."

"Bring your go bag."

"What?"

"Bring your go bag. Will's away at a conference, so it's just Henry and me this week. Bring your go bag, and you can crash whenever you want."

She could see his wavering resolve and went for it. "C'mon, Spence. Henry misses you. It's been weeks, hasn't it? And I can make some of your favorite... apricot chicken."

The very thought of seeing Henry lifted Reid's spirits. He'd not given his godson enough of himself since the idea of his quest had been conceived. Henry's life was one that Reid was  _sure_  he'd impacted. And, as short as it had been so far, Henry's life had clearly impacted Reid's.

_Maybe we_ can _make a difference. But maybe it needs to be made one day at a time. One minute at at time. Maybe it just needs us to resolve to be present to one another._

All he knew for certain was that he would give his time to his godson on this day.

"I guess I could. Did you say apricot chicken?"

JJ smiled.

She still wasn't all the way back to the self she used to know. Maybe she'd never get all the way back. Maybe she'd have to get used to a new self, and a new normal. Maybe Reid would have to do the same. She knew he still had a long way to go on his journey back to wholeness. But she also knew they each had what they needed to get there.

A sense of purpose, the love of others….and time.

FINIS


End file.
